Galaxy Wars: Fight for the Federation
by OneHorseShay
Summary: Galaxy Wars Parody/Fusion Fic - Captain Freddie Benson and the brave crew of the USS Tori battle across the galaxy to save the Federation against the iron fist of the Galactic Empire with the help of Princess Tori and her Rebel Alliance. Rated T for Language/Adult Themes, Violence. May increase to M for Violence in later chapters. Various Possible Pairings.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: I know I should not be starting a new story when I have plenty of others to work on, but this came to me sometimes last week and it's one of those pieces that I'll work on from time to time and testing to see what people think. I'm looking at something like a 50k to 75k word story when it is done over the course of the next six months.

This story is a parody of Dan Schneider's parody of _Star Trek: The Original Series_ and _Star Wars_, Galaxy Wars through his several series where the two sides can conceivably match each other in a fight long enough not to turn it into a cakewalk for the Empire. I don't want to get into any argument about who could beat who from hardcore fans from either side, it's a character piece in the backdrop of a war… besides, I already know after years and years of debate that the Empire could steamroll over the Federation in short order and I'm a _Star Trek_ fan saying this.

This will be on the _Star Trek_ side, an Original Series time framed story set shortly after 'Errand of Mercy' where the Organians butted their nose into the Federation's and Klingon Empire's Armageddon before it started with heavy borrowing from Amarillo Design Bureau's Star Fleet Universe along with perhaps the tidbit here and there from J.J. Abram's interpretation with of course any kind of reference from Drake & Josh, iCarly and Victorious of Galaxy Wars Name/Places/References. However, it isn't J.J. Abram's _Star Trek_, this is TOS.

Of course Happy 4th of July to all my US readers.

* * *

Galaxy Wars: Fight for the Federation  
By OneHorseShay

Disclaimer: Don't Own, don't sue, for God sakes, don't sue.

Rating: M for Violence (It's a War Story), T for Language and Adult Themes/Situations  
Pairing(s): Formerly Creddie; Others heavily explored.  
Summary: Galaxy Wars Parody/Fusion Fic - Captain Freddie Benson and the brave crew of the USS Tori battle across the galaxy to save the Federation against the iron fist of the Galactic Empire with the help of Princess Tori and her Rebel Alliance.

* * *

Chapter 1: Opening Shots

Main Bridge  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Constitution-Class Mk. II (Bonhomme Richard-subclass) Heavy Cruiser  
Sector 2903  
Stardate 2267.154  
(Monday, June 3, 2267)

Captain Frederick "Freddie" Benson rocked in the command chair as the starship reverberated from bracketing 'laser' fire from the enemy starship to starboard. He was jostled so hard in his chair that he feared that the strike might have breached not only the shields but the hull.

His fears were confirmed when the crewwoman manning the bridge engineering station to his left shouted, "Hull breaches on Deck Nine and Ten! Damage control parties in route!"

He shouted out, "Return phaser fire!"

"Aye sir!" Lieutenant (J.G.) Ava Cohen shouted in return as her fingers tapped the controls and several phasers lashed out at the enemy 'light cruiser' to their starboard side and striking it several times. The enemy deemed the vessel a light cruiser, but to Star Fleet, they were learning the hard way that the enemy 'Carrack' had more firepower than Star Fleet's heaviest ships and unfortunately, comparable shields as it withstood the bombardment.

* * *

The ad hoc taskforce made up of ships from Star Fleet's 2nd Fleet was duking it out with a little known alien fleet in a desperate attempt to defend an outer colony in an outer sector of the Federation as long as possible to evacuate as many of the willing colonists as possible. The Second Fleet was primarily a space exploration fleet, but they were Star Fleet and they would stand their ground against any aggression upon the Federation.

The USS Miranda, a new type of heavy cruiser and first of her class, came to her sister's aid and unleashed a barrage of torpedoes at the bow of the enemy ship. The half dozen torpedoes found their mark, however, they weren't enough to penetrate the cruiser's shields, but they must have hurt enough to cause her to turn away…. Or so the captain of the Miranda thought as the turn allowed the ship to open up with a broadside of turbolaser fire.

The heavy cruiser was faster as she dove down and away from the fire and fired off a few phaser pulses of her own in return. The Miranda swung around to rejoin the other ships of the taskforce as they concentrated their fire on a heavily shielded and armored grey rectangular vessel that was supporting the command vessel.

Tens of thousands of kilometers from the main fleet action in orbit of the planet, several Hermes-Class Scouts, saucers with a warp nacelle strapped underneath it by Constitution's neck and used for fleet electronic scouts and planetary surveyors before more dedicated science ships would continue with detailed analysis of planets, were desperately fending off Imperial eyeball and finned fighters from strafing the colony's escaping transport ships. The Imperial pilots made the mistake that the relatively lightly armed scouts would be easy pickings for them, but they paid for it with their lives as the multiple phaser banks let loose pulse found their marks guided by the ships' advance sensor suits.

The leading ship of the enemy battle group continued towards the planet, a nearly kilometer long delta shaped vessel that the Imperials called a Victory-Class Star Destroy with no one seriously challenging her with her planetary-grade level weaponry.

* * *

The viewscreen of the Tori washed out for a split second before the screen auto-corrected the image from a flash that turned out to be a an old Texas-Class light survey cruiser vanishing in a fireball, taking with it three hundred and fifty lives from being caught by the Victory's main batteries firing.

Benson clenched his teeth and barked, "Valentine, signal to fleet we're withdrawing!"

The rest of the bridge crew spared split second glances to their captain then turned their full attention to their stations.

The redheaded and red dressed young Caitian excitedly answered as her prehensile tail elatedly waved behind her, "'kay, 'kay."

Lieutenant Rex Powers shouted from his position at helm, "We're not going to be able to warp out of here without stopping that cruiser from broadcasting."

Benson maintained eye contact on the destroyer in front of them, but glanced down at the sensor screen between the navigator and helm to see another Imperial ship broadcasting heavy interference to forming a stable warp bubble just outside of the battle zone of between the planet and the enveloping Imperial taskforce.

The starship commander shouted, "Have you found us a gap yet Shapiro?!"

The curly haired science officer seated to his far right shouted, "Not yet! I'm working on it!"

"Don't have time," he muttered in disgust. "Powers hard over to starboard and straight to that cruiser."

"Aye sir, to the boobie cruiser!" Rex Powers' fingers danced across the console and the ship immediately responded in rotating along its center axis, the Imperial Victory-class Star Destroyer spinning out of view on the main viewscreen.

Benson wanted to admonish his sometimes perverted helm officer, but it was a pretty adapt description as the enemy vessel was delta shaped with four spheres sunk into the hull where it separated the globes into dorsal and ventral hemispheres.

The starship commander shouted another order, "Valentine! Signal Byrd and Columbia to follow us in and prepare for full Alpha Strike on our signal."

"'kay, 'kay!"

The heavy cruiser turned and started charging at the Interdictor cruiser with two off her younger sister ships, superficially identical in appearance to a Constitution-Class, but geared far more towards space exploration than even the Queen of the Fleet and unfortunately less armed. The Imperials immediately realized what the starship was attempting to accomplish and vectored in fighters to intercept as they were still adjusting to the acceleration characteristics of their adversaries (not that the behemoth Imperial warships were slouches in accelerating).

The alien fleet's tactics was a useless waste of life in trying to stop the heavy cruiser as eight phaser cannons from the starship's saucer blazed in rapid fire, shredding the fighter screen between her and the Interdictor cruiser. Those that the phasers didn't hit the ship flew past and some stuck the shields and disintegrating against them, sending their respective pilots to the other side.

After the three starships swept aside the fighter screen, the Interdictor started throwing up a wall of fire at the incoming ships, but it was far too late even if they were making superficial hits.

The quartet saucer ventral torpedo launchers of the Tori stagger fired her photon torpedoes, sending a dozen orange looking shooting stars at the delta shaped cruiser's command tower. Her sister ships joined her with an additional dozen torpedoes and phaser beams where the matter/antimatter warheads found their marks.

Shields weakened from the sudden screen of fire she had thrown up and putting power into gravity-well generators, failed from the destructive force of matter and antimatter annihilating each other. The command tower broke apart and surrounding area of the ship was consumed in flames, sending the ship started listing to its starboard side.

The starships flew past the dying ship and out of the noose of the Imperial envelopment of the taskforce around the planet.

USS Tori (NCC-1725)

Benson stood up from his seat and patted Cohen on the shoulder and ordered, "Aft view on screen."

She followed the order as the Captain shouted over his right shoulder, "Signal all ships that we've made a hole and follow us out!"

The redhead relayed the orders, but a moment later looked over her left shoulder and shouted, "The National Guard ships are refusing to acknowledge the withdraw order."

Benson clenched down hard on his jaw then shouted back, "Understood." He looked to the main viewer and shouted, "Powers, set your course for Battlestation Vereb. Cohen, Warp Eight."

The pair replied at the same time then Shapiro turned in his seat and asked, "We're just going to leave them sir?"

The gold shirt wearing officer slightly frowned and answered in a solemn tone, "I have no intention of throwing away anyone's life for heroic nonsense."

As to make his point, on the main viewer, one of the colony's outdated light cruisers made a suicide run at the support cruiser that had battered the side of the Tori and danced with the Miranda. She crashed dead center into the starboard side of the rectangular ship, splitting it in half and consuming both ships in a fireball, sending another fourteen hundred souls to the beyond.

One of the star destroyers continued on its way into orbit as if the ship was never with her along with her fighter screen to take air superiority over the colony.

Benson whispered in disgust, "Engage warp speed."

Cohen quickly answered, "Aye sir."

About two dozen starships of the taskforce along with several colonial transport ships followed the Tori out into space (and finally taking down the grey rectangular ship into a burning hulk on their way out) then flashed to superluminal speeds.

Sick Bay  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Constitution-Class Mk. II Heavy Cruiser

"Move! Move! Move! I want this deck cleared! Walking wounded to the port side of sickbay!" Doctor Ezekiel Fisher, an elderly doctor that was literally days away from retirement and was more or less a passenger to the Tori's next port of call shouted as he waved in the spare science department crewmen carrying some of the wounded on stretchers.

"How many do we have Ezekiel?!" Jade West, an attractive pale woman with near black hair, blue eyes and the ship's Chief Medical Officer called out as she walked into sickbay helping another crewman walk then helped him sit down. The pair had scorch marks on the back of their respective uniforms.

The graying gentleman turned and reported, "Fifteen wounded so far, four with severe radiation burns, shrapnel and decompression exposure. I have two confirmed dead so far."

"Okay, I'll take the most severe case and you and Sherry split the rest. The nurses and the corpsmen can continue prepping the wounded for surgery."

He gave her a near grandfatherly smile as he answered, "Already on it Doctor." He was glad that she was apparently handling the stress of medicine in a combat situation.

In the controlled chaos of attending to the incoming wounded, one of the crewmembers was screaming on a bio-bed, "MAMA! MAMA!" She was the first that Jade stopped to attend. She looked down at the young crewmember that looked like she was just out of training, 18 or 19 years old and both of her legs were gone from the knees down. A corpsman was desperately trying to cauterizing the stubs before the girl bled out and apparently didn't have the time to give her a sedative. Jade was surprised that the girl hadn't just passed out from the agony.

Jade quickly prepared a hypospray from the tray next to the head of the bed then pressed it to the side of the girl's neck, bringing much needed relief to the girl. The girl's eyelids suddenly became heavy and she calmed.

The dark haired doctor brushed a hand over her forehead and whispered, "You're going to be alright."

"Mama?" she whispered as tried to focus on the lovely doctor.

Jade put her hand on the side of the crewman's face. "Yes, it's me. Mother is taking care of you."

The corpsman looked up and stated, "I got this. They'll need you for surgery."

He was proven right when a nurse shouted, "Doctor West!"

Deck Nine  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Constitution-Class Mk. II Heavy Cruiser

Benson held on to the turbolift handle as he patiently waited for the lift to arrive on the damaged deck so he could get a first hand account of the damage while the Tori continued on her way without a hint of pursuit. The lift stopped and the door parted by a few inches before refusing to move any further. He slid his fingers and had to give the turbolift door a good shove to open it. A crewmember on the other side noticed and gave him a hand and together one half of the door opened, allowing him to slip through.

The crewmember gave a quick salute and continued on his task of repairing the turbolift doors.

The captain walked passed him and down the corridor while other engineers doubled checked control relays of the bulkheads on either side of the corridor. He shouted out as he recognized his chief engineer, "Gibby?! How bad are we hurt?"

The taller red-shirted engineer turned and shouted with a motion past the blast door, "The hull was breached on Deck Nine and Ten, but there's no structural damage and my boys and girls are double checking to make sure there isn't any control interface damage. As soon as we can drop out of warp, I can get my guys in there to patch her up in no time. She won't be pretty without a dry dock, but she'll be fine."

Benson nodded his head then questioned, "How's shields looking?"

Gibby happily answered, "They'll be at full strength within the hour." He leaned forward and whispered, "But I hope you don't plan to take her into another fight anytime soon."

The starship commander gave him a weary smile and answered, "Not my choice Gibby. I'll leave you to your duty."

The redshirt nodded his head and Benson turned to head back down the corridor to the turbolift, but before he turned, he noticed a gruesome splattering of blood on the blast door and the deck where they met.

Sickbay  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Constitution-Class Mk. II Heavy Cruiser

Benson stepped into sickbay slowly as the doors parted. He looked over to the filled sickbay and some of the more able bodied crewmembers brought themselves to attention. A familiar smell came to his nostrils, one that he hadn't smelled in years. It was the stench of irradiated flesh. It may have been just him he had always thought, but that smell was slightly different then just flesh burnt by fire.

"Sir," a lovely sandy blonde nurse walked up and spoke.

Benson cracked a soft smile at recognizing the nurse that Robbie had failed miserably at asking out during their last shore leave, Sandie if he remembered her name correctly. He brushed that amusing incident aside and asked, "Is Doctor West still treating someone?"

She put on a reassuring smile and softly answered in relief, "She's making one last check then we're forcing her to take a break, but she's in the intensive care unit if you wish to speak with her."

He gave a polite nod and answered, "I'll wait."

However, he didn't wait as he went down the row of medbeds and checked on several crewmembers to pass a glance at the overhead monitors and share a reassuring word or two with his injured crewmembers much to the appreciation of the crew. He passed throw Ward 1 and 2 until he finally made his way to the Intensive Care/Isolation Ward.

Benson was taken back for a moment at seeing Doctor West from the back as the ends of her long hair peaking from the surgical cap was noticeably singed. He was about to comment, but apparently she heard his presence and commented, "It looks worst then it really is. Star Fleet uniforms are fire resistant… and I wasn't wearing one of those stupid dresses."

The brown eyed captain was going to laugh at her well know dislike for the Star Fleet uniform dress female crewmembers were allowed to wear and instead when she was on duty outside of medical dress wore the female version of the male crewmembers shirts and pants. However, he didn't laugh but instead softly swallowed before he could catch himself when she turned to face him with a noticeable dermal patch over her right cheek.

She gave him a reassuring smile and softly commented, "I'll be fine in an hour."

He nodded his head then walked to stand beside her to look down at the young girl Jade was standing beside and double checking her vitals with a tricorder, apparently not trusting the overhead scanner. The sheet covering the girl was dipped down at where her lower legs were supposed to be.

Benson took the unconscious crewman's hand for a moment and looked up to see the bed monitor displaying the stable vitals of one Courtney Van Cleef.

Jade softly explained, "She was on Deck Nine when the hull breached. She went back to get a trapped crewmember and dragged him out of the decompressed area. They had to crawl their way out and she was able to shove him to safety, but she was a moment too slow. The emergency bulkhead dropped and... well you can see what happened. The crewman that she saved carried her the four decks up over his shoulder when the turbolifts when out on the deck."

He took a sharp breath as he pieced together seeing the blood on the blast door and girl lying before her. He glanced over and saw the girl's red dress uniform and his mind went to the old fleet superstition that wearing a red shirt on a starship during an exploration mission was akin to signing one's own death warrant. He never gave it much thought since he had worked himself up through the science department and wore blue for most of his career, but that changed after his first command. Since that two year mission, he had seriously thought about ordering the engineering and the SFs to switch to gold shirts and dresses regardless of protocol.

He finally asked, "How is she?"

Doctor West answered, "Stable and resting comfortably. She'll be sent planet side as soon as you can have her transferred off where they'll clone her some lower legs and eventually she'll physically be fine, probably traumatized for life, but physically she'll be fine. Very brave girl."

He nodded his head as she turned away and walked over to a bench opposite of the bed's feet to have a seat. Doctor West ran a hand over her forehead and above her head to pull of her blue surgical cap off her head.

She let out a tired breath then looked off to the floor, but didn't really look at it.

Benson gave her a sympathetic expression then took a seat next to the pale, but quite lovely doctor and asked, "Are you okay?"

She leaned back against the bulkhead, but refused to meet his eyes as she answered in a tired voice, "We have thirteen injured, two that were blown out into space and I lost two less than an hour ago from the radiation sickness."

He softly patted her hand resting on her thigh then gently grasped it.

The blue eye doctor took a sharp breath and looked up at the ceiling as the first tear started to roll down the valley between her nose and cheek. She softly whispered, "I thought we had dodged Armageddon with the Klingons."

Benson gently took her hand to give her a supportive squeeze and answered, "Yeah, with the Klingons, but it looks like someone else still wanted one and the false gods aren't going to step in again to save us from it."

Jade took a deep breath, squeezed his hand in return and the pair just sat there quietly with only the overhead bed monitor softly beeping.

* * *

The battered survivors of members of the 2nd Fleet continued on their way to a safe harbor and were cutting through the Vereb start system at low warp in route to the Battlestation just outside the system. The station was based in that position as a port for patrolling Star Fleet and Federation Police vessels in maintaining the quarantine of the system from the native inhabitants from leaving.

Main Bridge  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Constitution-Class Mk. II Heavy Cruiser

After sitting with the doctor for about half an hour, Captain Benson returned to the bridge and stepped onto it as soon as the turbolift doors parted.

A crewmember shouted, "Captain on the Bridge!" as he walked to his command seat.

Shapiro called out after the announcement, "Captain?"

"Yes Commander? Are any Wasp vessels offering challenge?"

Star Fleet orders were to destroy their vessels on sight if caught outside their star system, but there were no clear orders of encountering them while inside their own system. Communications were out of the question as they refused to ever communicate with the Federation and always ended with the exchange of weapons fire. After the last several days of running battles with unknown aliens, he had little patients from the natives challenging them from passing through the system.

"I can't pick up _any_ Wasp vessels."

Benson slightly turned in his seat and asked in mild shock, "What?"

"I'm reading absolutely no traffic on my screens."

Cat called out from her station, "Other ships in the taskforce are signaling the same."

He waved his thanks.

"Wait… we're passing close enough to their planet, but… something's wrong."

"Put it on the main viewer so we can all see."

The blue shirt officer followed his captain's orders and passing star field was replaced with an orbital picture of Vereb IV, a lush planet, but no more. The sphere was a smoldering rock with visible lava flows and massive volcanic activity, throwing up material at such a velocity that it was almost making orbit.

Commander Shapiro muttered in horror, "The life science bio-scanners are reading no life on the planet."

The other members of the bridge crew looked on in horror, but Powers uttered in disgust, "Good riddance."

Benson wanted to admonish him for such a breach of etiquette, but couldn't disagree with his helm officer's assessment of the situation. The Wasp people of Vereb IV were quarantined in their own system due to the fact that they eat other sentient people and use them as livestock for their larvae. They were one of the most terrifying creatures in the known galaxy and now all twelve billion sentient beings were dead.

The Imperials may have done the galaxy a favor ridding them of such a people, but then again they were still a sentient people.

Benson stated the obvious in a solemn tone, "We can't do anything for them now… maintain course to Battlestation Vereb."

Powers answered, "Aye sir."

A few minutes ticked by as the taskforce was nearing the edge of the system, but the expected relief was shattered when Shapiro spoke up, "Captain, sensors aren't picking up the station."

Benson's brow knotted and quickly got out of the command chair to walk over to the science station. He looked over his science officer's left shoulder to one of the display monitors to see that the screen was clear of any objects in the taskforce's immediate path.

Shapiro looked into the sensor hood and reported, "Battlestation Vereb isn't there, but… sensors are reading debris."

The mood on the bridge instantly became solemn, but they continued on their tasks.

Cat quietly spoke up, "Captain?"

He looked to the lovely girl and answered, "Yes Valentine?"

"The captain of the Byrd is asking for instructions."

"Reply that we're proceeding to Base-Station Two-Nine-Zero-Five."

She nodded her head and turned to her task with her tail lazily whisking about.

Benson remained silent as he retook his command chair with the thought that he may have left several thousand colonist behind to be slaughtered… and possibly an unknown number of Wasps that had escaped to plague the galaxy. He took a breath and whispered out in a curt tone, "Cohen, back to Warp Eight as soon as we clear the system's Kuiper belt."

"Aye sir."

* * *

Author's Note: You're probably wondering where in the world I got USS Tori from as a starship name other than the obvious. I didn't make it up for the story, but it is actually from the great Franz Joseph's 'Star Trek: Star Fleet Technical Manual' and his lists of Constitution-Class ships and couldn't resist using the name. Don't let the Bonhomme Richard-subclass thing throw you off, the Tori is identical to the Enterprise from TOS since the ship went through several updates to get to that point in the show from a launch date of 2245 to 2267 (not the TMP refit). Yes, I'm being too detailed. Also Cat is a J.J. Abram's _Star Trek: Into Darkness_ interpretation of a Caitian, not the Animated Series Interpretation and no fur. Don't be shy with reviews, thanks.


	2. Chapter 2: What a Face for a Rebellion

Author's Note: Hello my dear readers. I got another chapter done, so I thought I'd get it out today.

Challenge King: Thank you, but I'm curious as to how you judge in-character for them as there has been only one chapter, so I'm still establishing character for them in addition to what you know of them from their respective shows.

Fanfic-Reader-88: Oh, it just gets worst for these people. It is a war and I'm not pulling punches on showing how messy and brutal it will become, that's why parts will eventually reach an M rating.

PD31: I took from an Ancient Greek story telling technique to jump the audience right into the action. Yes, backstory for these characters will be filled in as the story progresses.

illusorygentleman: Thanks, because I hope it's an enjoyable kind of different.

Agent-M-0167: Thank you. Fortunately since Galaxy Wars is billed as it not being a cakewalk for the Empire, it allows me not to have to write it as one.

Speaking of illusorygentleman, I recently ran across his work and if you're old enough, I suggest you take a look at his work, especially his later stuff that covers Jedi. I'm usually hesitant to recommend specific M rated fics due to the age range of my usual readers and the content in general, but for those who are old enough to read them, I suggest you give them a try because the stories good and they progressively get better outside the M rated scenes. If you think they're just lemons, then I would have to respectfully disagree with you. However, I did warn you about the rating and so does he in his stories, so be responsible in your reading.

Okay, on with the chapter.

Rating: T Language

* * *

Chapter 2: What a Face for a Rebellion

Main Bridge  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Constitution-Class Mk. II Heavy Cruiser

An hour or so later after passing through the Vereb's Kuiper belt, Captain Benson sat in his command seat with a PADD in his hand reading over the progress of ship repairs then started writing out condolence letters to the families of the crewmembers lost in battle. He had written these before after skirmishes with the Klingons and battles with Orion Pirates, but they never got any easier… telling someone they were sorry for their loss seemed so hollow as it was to him…

_Freddie ran down the hospital corridor as quickly as his feet could take him, but he suddenly stopped before reaching the Emergency Room at the sight of Jade standing several feet in front of it. She wore a dermal patch over the left side of her forehead, scratches on her right cheek, her hair disheveled and right arm in a sling. Her blue uniform shirt had several scorch marks on it and torn in a few places. Tears freely ran down from her bloodshot eyes and she looked paler than her normal appearance. _

_The forced his feet to move to stop just in front of her and gently placed his hands on her shoulders. He looked directly into her blue eyes and fearfully asked, "Jade?"_

_She choked out, "I'm… I'm so sorry, I'm…" She couldn't continue as she dropped her forehead onto his left shoulder and he wrapped his arms around her. He looked over her shoulder to see several medical personal exiting the room and a brief glance at seeing someone pulling a sheet over someone's face before the doors swung closed._

His wedding band felt very heavy… heavier than the PADD in his hand.

He clenched his fist tight then turned back to continue writing. He didn't get very far as Shapiro called out, "Sir, I'm picking up several vessels in our path."

He looked up from his PADD and called out, "Sound General Quarters!"

Valentine called out, "Aye sir!"

The red lights flashed on the bridge and throughout the ship along with the expected klaxons as since the battle the taskforce had been on Yellow Alert.

A yeoman approached to the captain's left and took the PADD from him as he continued, "Identify."

"They're Star Fleet and they're on an intercept course."

He passed the quickest of glanced over his right shoulder. "Valentine, I want IFF confirmation."

"Working on it sir."

Several hundred thousand kilometers in front of the taskforce, several frigates, a pair of Saladin-Class Destroyers (identical in appearance to the Hermes-Class Scouts), a Constitution-Class starship and about two dozen fighters dropped out of warp.

The redhead Caitian held the earpiece in her pointy ear and happily informed, "It's the USS Ari and they're signaling they're our escorts."

"Acknowledge signal."

Valentine joyfully obeyed with her tail waving about behind her, "Hiiiii… this is Cat of the starship Tori, acknowledging instructions."

Benson softly pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a soft breath.

* * *

The taskforce and her escorts proceeded at low warp for several minutes, passing several patrols of heavy cruisers with paired or trio destroyer groups, until they reached a Mobile Basestation.

It was a mobile station in the truest sense as it was made up six large transport cylinders attached to a center command structure as if they were spokes to a wheel. The base appeared so ready to take off that there was either Ptolemy-Class Fleet Transport (Constitution saucer with dual warp nacelles strutting out from the bottom) or a Hoffa-Class Light Tactical Transport was still connected to the transport cylinders and ready to take off with their cargo in a heartbeat.

The station buzzed with several flights of fighters on patrol and several mobile dry docks where several battle damaged starships were being attended.

Several ships were docked amongst the ends of the cylinder with the most visible ones being a Federation-Class Dreadnaught and a Napoleon-Class Heavy Carrier.

Valentine spoke up again, "Rear Admiral Shay of the Federation requests that you see him immediate."

Benson blew out a soft breath as he wore a pensive expression. He grudgingly ordered, "Send acknowledge Valentine, contact the dock master for permission to dock and tell Commander Gibson to start patching up the hole in my ship… but you don't have to be so eager in responding."

"'kay, 'kay," she happily ignored him as she went about her task.

Admiral's Office  
USS Federation (NCC-2100)  
Federation-Class Dreadnaught  
Task Force 7, Elements of First, Second, Third and Fifth Fleets  
Docked to Mobile Basestation  
Sector 2903

Benson stopped in front of the door to the office with an armored, rifle carrying marine standing on either side. Neither marine offered a salute as that would require them to take their hands off their respective weapon, but they acknowledged the captain with a slight nod of their respective heads. The door opened and he entered the Admiral's office. As soon as he stepped in front of the desk, snapped his right hand in a salute.

Rear Admiral Steven "Loco" Shay, dressed in a gold command shirt and black trousers instead of the expected white and grey colored uniform expected of an admiral, returned the salute then retook his seat behind his desk and leaned back in his chair. "Captain Benson."

"Admiral Shay."

"At ease."

Benson complied and stood at ease with his hands behind his back.

Shay's voice had the outer sound of a professional, but there was a fatherly concern underneath it, "I'm glad you made it out."

The starship commander refused to meet the admiral's eyes again as he answered, "Thank you sir. We gave them a good fight sir. We made them bleed for the system. I just wish we could have made them bleed a little more."

Shay replied in a completely confident voice signaling he had the admiral's support on whatever he was about say, "What happened son?"

Benson stiffened his posture and cleared his throat.

The Admiral slightly frowned at the captain's spike in uneasiness and corrected, "What happened out there _Captain_?"

The Captain continued his focus on the wall above the Admiral's head has he continued, "I haven't finished my After Action Report yet. I was still going over battle damage of the task force and causality list when we made contact with the escort."

"Informal one then Captain."

Benson set his jaw tightly for a moment then answered, "With the ships of second fleet that were able to rendezvous with us and the handful of the colony National Guard ships, we engaged an enemy fleet above Ogle colony in an attempt to allow them to evacuate as many people off as possible. We outnumbered them two-to-one, but we were severally outgunned. When I realized that even a holding action was suicidal, I ordered a withdrawn. The Tori, Byrd and Columbia engaged one of their vessels sending out interference and I ordered our escape through the hole we made through their envelopment… I stuck my tail between my legs and I ran away and I ordered my taskforce and those colony ships that made it out to do the same. The National Guard ships refused the order and stood and fight. I can only assume they were all destroyed and the colony completely occupied."

He licked his lips then finished, "We were able to destroy their… interdictor cruiser, what I assume is one of their battle cruisers and a National Guard ship suicide rammed one of their light cruisers, destroying both in the process. We also destroyed dozens of their fighter craft."

The Admiral leaned back in his chair and slightly tilted his head as he looked to the young captain. He took a soft breath and replied, "You made the right call. You saved your ship and the rest of your taskforce from overwhelming odds."

Benson clenched his jaw tightly then answered with barely constrained self-loathing, "I'm sorry sir, but that's little comfort to having to abandon that many people to occupation… assuming they just don't exterminate them like the Wasps."

Shay nodded his head as Benson continued, "When we were passing through the Verebian system we found that surface of Vereb Four into molten rock. We assumed it was this alien force."

The Admiral sympathetically answered, "I know, but to bring you a little piece of mind, there haven't been any reports of any mass executions. If anything, the reports filtering out are that they have been far more humane than the Klingons in their occupations."

Benson found that a little hard to believe in that the Klingons had no problem butchering innocent woman and children. On Organian the Klingon Commander Kor attempted to execute hundreds of the inhabitants in an attempt to ferret out Captain Kirk and Commander Spock left stranded on the planet during the Four Day War with the Klingons before the godlike inhabitants put a halt to the war. If he ever met Commander Kor and had the opportunity, he'd kill him in a heartbeat. The Klingon wasn't a soldier, but a butcher wannabe and the universe would be better off without him.

"Speaking of Klingons, I'm surprised to see you here sir. I would expect you to be on our side of the Klingon Neutral Zone with Third Fleet or did you finally listen to your wife and take the first opening in Home Fleet or desk job?"

Shay muttered out in disgust, "Yes, the _'Neutral Zone'_." The Admiral's feelings on the Organians were well known of being of absolute disgust with the godlike entities and their interference in the war. As a career officer that had seen combat across known space against Klingons, rebel Kzinti and Orion Pirates and dozen of minor races that threatened peace, he of all people knew the horrors of war, so he was the first to advocate finding a peaceful solution to problems with the Federation stellar neighbors as had been done with frosty relations with the Tholians and far warmer relations with the Gorns.

However, the way the Organians imposed peace left him bitter as the price for peace was too high: they allowed the Klingons to get away with their openly aggressive actions that included multiple invasions of Federation territory and killing of their citizens. Also in Shay's opinion, refusing to allow the Federation to finally check the Klingons allowed them to continued to mistreat their subject races and other races within their borders and allowed them to continue to be aggressive to their weaker 'Western' neighbors the Hydran and Lyrans or their newly discovered 'Northern' neighbor the Cardassians.

The Organian Ayelborne's question to James Kirk would haunt him possibly for the rest of his life, _"To wage war, Captain? To kill millions of innocent people? To destroy life on a planetary scale? Is that what you're defending?"_

The question would haunt him because he had an answer instead of Jim's sputtering capitulating answer; the answer is yes when the alternative is to bow to the Klingons and his sons and stepdaughter living under their boot.

Shay continued with a somber voice, "No, I'm still with Third Fleet. I just brought a number of combat veteran ships to lead ships sent from Home, Gorn Border and as many Second Fleet ships that can get back here in a counterattack against the Imperials. The Klingons will think twice before trying to take advantage of the situation with Morgan there incase the Organians suddenly change their minds in interfering."

Benson finally looked down to meet the Admiral's eyes and stated, "Sir, you don't intend to have a knock down drag out fight? I've seen what their ships can do; we can't stand toe-to-toe with their ships-of-the-line. They carry the heaviest of planetary grade weaponry and possibly beyond that."

"I know. How do you think Battlestation Vereb is just a debris field now?"

Benson softly bit his tongue and glanced away.

Shay got up from his seat and walked around the desk to stand next to the young man as he continued speaking, "I have absolutely no intention of doing such a thing. They'd bulldozer over us. Nogura may want me to do such a thing, but that's suicide and Fleet Admiral Marcus supports my strategic position."

"Then what do you plan to do?"

"A fighting retreat, but now they will bleed for every inch of space they take from us."

"All the way to Earth?"

Shay clenched his jaw for a moment then answered in a resigned tone, "If necessary… Earth is just one planet."

Benson confidently pointed out, "The Tori will be right there sir; giving her all she's got."

Shay raised a coy eyebrow and questioned, "Is that a request for the Tori… or _you_ to be officially transferred out of Second Fleet and given another command?"

"I'll go where you send me sir, but I doubt you'd put your stepdaughter into the front line."

Shay took a deep breath then casually commented, "Jade's a big girl who makes her own decisions. Jade wanted Tori, so she got Tori."

Benson wanted to point out that he had final say in his CMO, but refrained from commenting on that point and surprisingly challenged, "I doubt you tell your wife such a thing."

The veteran cracked a smile and answered, "I don't have to; Jade tells Ruby exactly how she feels."

The starship commander finally cracked a smile and answered with a jovial voice, "Doctor West never has been one to hold back her tongue."

Shay rested against the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest, refraining from commenting on the fact Benson addressed Jade by her title. He blew out a tired breath and continued with a more somber tone, "I would like to make you one of my taskforce commanders, but… I have a far more important job." The Admiral licked his lips then continued, "Probably the most important job of this war."

Benson knotted his brow as Shay tapped a control under his computer monitor and the large viewscreen embedded into the bulkhead to Benson's right turned on to show a display of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The Captain immediately noticed that the fourth top portion of the Federation and some of known Gorn space had changed to a crimson red from the respective blue and green colors usually used to display the stellar nations.

Shay turned and walked to the screen with Benson in tow. "This is the current strategic situation: They've attacked and occupied any colony worth having in the northern twenty six sectors of Federation space. They've done the same to the Gorns and we think they have done the same with the Cardassians according to Fourth Fleet, but they're not talking and we're pulling Fourth Fleet back to consolidate with Third Fleet. We're not wasting scouts.

The captain shook his head and asked while studying the strategic map, "Who are they? Who are we fighting?"

"They call themselves the 'Galactic Empire', an Imperial dictatorship that overthrew a representative republic similar to the Federation that stood for the last twenty-five thousand years and controls the entire Gamma and Delta Quadrants from what we've been able to determine so far."

"Twenty-five thousand years? Why didn't we encounter them millennia ago? Why didn't they just plant a flag on any of our planets we were in caves?"

"We don't know why. They're not much up for talking except demanding our surrender and the GIA's contacts haven't provided that information yet other than perhaps there was some navigational hazard related to their form of FTL drive that kept them on that side of the galaxy."

"Like the Galactic Barrier?"

"We don't know, but what we do know is they've overcome that limitation and turned their attention on us."

Benson blew out a breath and commented while looking back at the screen, "And they're stomping us into the ground…"

"But hopefully not for long. The GIA has found out that the Empire isn't a monolithic entity with full control over their territory."

"Recent dictatorships usually don't."

Shay raised an eyebrow and answered, "True, but this one as an effective, organized rebellion and this is where you come in: I need you to make contact with the leader of this rebellion, a Princess and Senator Tori Ablingada of the planet Alderaan or was until she was expelled from their senate, and negotiate an alliance with this resistance."

Benson knotted his brow as he questioned the Admiral, "_Tori_ Ablingada? A princess and a senator?"

The war veteran snorted out a breath, "It's one of the translations that the Universal Translator comes up with during translation of their common language. I thought it would be nicer than just calling her 'bird'."

Freddie snorted out a laugh and slightly shook his head.

The Admiral walked over to the viewscreen and tapped on it and switched the display from the map to a picture of a very lovely brunette and very human looking young woman who if she was from Earth would be of Hispanic descent. "Her homeworld is currently blockaded by the Empire and now she's the face of the resistance."

"A pretty face… I wouldn't be surprised if people joined just to meet her."

Shay softly chuckled at seeing that Benson could still have a sense of humor, unfortunately it didn't last long as he asked in a serious tone, "Why me? There must be plenty of other people more qualified to make contact with her: trained diplomats or some GIA spook?"

The former starfighter flyer snorted, "More qualified? You use to be a member of a Prime Team—best of the best of landing parties trained to handle anything Star Fleet needs and you're a starship commander on a five year exploration mission who is expected to make first contact with unknown alien civilizations on a regular basis. This is exactly what you trained for and have the experience in handling."

Benson glanced away and reluctantly questioned, "What about Kirk? Isn't the Enterprise still assigned to Third Fleet or is she back in Second Fleet? He's the living legend that handles these sorts of things in his sleep and he could probably seduce her into anything he wanted her to do for us."

The Admiral frowned at the mention of the Big E's commander. "Captain Kirk is quite ill-suited for this assignment."

The young man gave the Admiral a curious expression. "How sir? He meets the qualifications you expect from me."

"Except for character. The last thing I need for him is to sleep with her and have a scorn woman who may decide to sit on the sidelines and let the Empire carve us up out of spite and he thinks he's invincible, but it's his crew that suffers with death after death. His luck is going to run out at some point and I don't need it to run out on this mission."

Benson felt the need to defend his fellow starship captain, "I'm not sure that's a fair judgment of him sir."

"How many crewmembers have you lost in your two years so far?"

"Including today?"

"No."

"None, sir."

"He's lost nearly thirty, he's been out there for the same amount of time and you've faced the same challenges and other than ships lost with all hands, no one has as high a causality rate as he has."

Benson frowned as he hated to admit the Admiral was correct. Kirk's casualty rate was atrocious.

"There is one more reason that I need you."

"Yes, sir?"

"Well as nepotistic as this is: you're my son and there's no one I trust more to handle this."

Benson gave him a deep frown and snapped off in a blatant disrespectful manner to a superior officer, "I'm not your son anymore."

Shay gave him a fatherly smile, rested his hand on his shoulder and answered, "You'll always be my son."

The gold shirted young man clenched his jaw tightly to try not to let the Admiral know that his words cut deep. He took a step back and turned his attention back to the picture of the Princess. He snorted out in annoyance, "Where am I going to make contact with her?"

The Admiral held back a smile and answered, "You'll be meeting at a predetermined set of coordinates past the north of Gorn space." Shay walked next to Benson and tapped the screen again to bring the map back up then pointed to the spot. Unfortunately, it was in Imperial occupied territory."

"How will I get there? That's further than any of our ships have ever gone before and according to this, the Imperials control that space."

"You won't be taking the Tori, but an alternative means of transportation. Since the invasion, planets across the northern half of the Federation have been visited by private individuals looking to do business with us."

Benson raised an eyebrow and questioned, "They're invading economically too?"

Shay cracked a smile. "The shoe's on the other foot for a change. Anyway, you'll be meeting an individual on Skoleos and you will be arranging personal transport with him. A one, Beck Oliver or so the Universal Translator translates his name and he thinks he's arranging for one of his freighter pilots to transport people that want to get out of the way of fighting and you'll keep it that way."

The young man nodded along then asked, "What am I authorized to offer her to entice her into an alliance?"

"Anything short of biological weapons."

"Who's my team?"

"The team is up to you and you have access to anyone in the fleet including several Prime Teams you can pull people from, but I wouldn't suggest more than three as it may look suspicious."

"Yes sir."

He walked over to his desk and pulled a blue data microtape and handed it to the captain. "This is all the information that GIA has been able to obtain about the Princess, the rebels and the 'business men' from the other side. You have a day before you have to leave. You'll take the Tori to just outside of Skoleos System then take a civilian shuttle to the planet. The Tori will be on standby if you'll need her. You are authorized to inform only those personal that you are taking with you."

"Thank you sir. If you'll excuse me, I have some work to do." Benson raised his hand and offered a salute that Shay quickly returned. He turned to leave and head for the door, but just before he reached it, he called over his shoulder, "Say hello to Ian for me the next time you speak with him."

Shay nodded his head with a smile then the young man exited the office. He walked around and had a seat behind his desk. He took a moment to glance at the family picture of his wife Ruby, Jade, Spencer, Carly, Freddie and little Ian on Ruby's lap and took a deep breath. He turned to his desk computer and tapped a few controls.

A few moments later a Federation seal was brought up then the face of Fleet Admiral Marcus appeared on the screen. This far out from Earth there would be at least a seventy five minute delay in communications, but fortunately Shay had access to highly kept secret subspace booster relays. The Star Fleet CinC politely greeted him, "Admiral Shay? News?"

"Captain Benson has accepted the assignment and he'll be on his way in a day."

The graying officer gave a solemn nod of his head. "What did you tell him?"

"What he needed to know to get the job done and an electronic trail that says he was just following what he thought were lawful orders by me, getting him off the hook if this mission goes bad."

Marcus snorted out in disgust, "To Hell with that Steven. I'll dump this whole thing on Vice Admiral Fitzpatrick in an instant and finally get rid of that damn 'desk admiral' if this thing goes to Hell. I'm not sacrificing your boy or you for this."

Shay slightly shook his head and held back a smirk as the Admiral displayed to of his famous traits: loyalty and disgust with incompetent fools put into positions of power over far more competent individuals.

* * *

Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I hope you put some pieces together about some background and what is going on, especially if you've seen _Star Trek: Into Darkness_ and remember how I treat Steven Shay's career in the Air Force. Also, I borrowed from Amarillo Design Bureau Star Fleet Universe some races and the concept of the 'Prime Team'. Think of them as a group of personnel trained to Special Forces level training to specifically be an Away Team or Landing Party in TOS so you wouldn't put your senior staff, especially a starship commander in a highly dangerous situation even with a bunch of redshirts.

If you're ever curious about the class of ships I mention, a good source is jaynz dot trekships dot org slash index dot php and look under Federation (2265) and Federation (ADB) sections.

Joe Flanigan as Rear Admiral Steven 'Loco' Shay  
Peter Weller as Fleet Admiral Alexander Marcus  
Drew Roy as Rex Powers


	3. Chapter 3: Doctor's Orders

Hello dear readers, I have another chapter for you already. I hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks for reading and spreading the word for this story and keep spreading.

Agent-M-0167: For those that have seen _Star Trek: Into Darkness_, I hope they understand the significance of his appearance.

I'm glad I could impress you in only two chapters. I thought it would be interesting for some characters not to fall over themselves in hero worship to the living legend, which he still hasn't reached yet as at this point he's only two years into his five year mission that made him that legend.

illusorygentleman: That chapter was meant to catch the reader up as to what is going on in the overall picture. I hope people will understand the significance of having Admiral Marcus (Weller) for _Star Trek: Into Darkness_ in the end scene.

Challenge King: Thanks, the flashback was a subtle way to start fleshing out the characters.

Fanfic-Reader-88: You don't think USS Tori isn't a pun? Sitting on the other side of a negotiating table with someone as lovely as that could still be a challenge for Freddie. Leia wasn't a pushover and Tori isn't going to be either. The picture in important for the character aspect of the story.

Rating: K+ Language

* * *

Chapter 3: Doctor's Orders

Briefing Room  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Docked to Mobile Basestation  
Sector 2903

Captain Benson sat in usual seat on the far side of the table to the door reading on his PADD the various personal he could pick for his mission and waiting for the rest of the senior staff to report to the briefing. Commander Shapiro was already on his left faithfully sitting behind the duotronic computer console at the end of the briefing table.

He didn't pay any attention to when the door whooshing open and closed, signaling when a crewmember would arrive. He felt a the familiar brush of a soft hand just below his neck across his shoulder blades as the doctor always used the top of his chair's headrest to balance while walking around his chair as the doctor's place at the briefing table was to his right. He glanced to his right to greet her as she sat down, but he misjudged the timing and did a double take at the image in his line of sight: the blue hem of female dress duty uniform passed the doctor's left wrist and barely reaching her first joint of her thumb contrasting against her pale bare thigh.

She took a seat, trying to adjust the miniskirt of the uniform under her bottom and wore an even expression as she commented with a hint of disgust, "I was in a hurry and this was faster to change into than a shirt and pants. My medical uniform was a mess, so I just couldn't walk over."

He nodded his head in understanding then cleared his throat while turning his attention back to the PADD. His voice was slightly strained as he answered her and tried to focus his attention on the PADD, "Which duty uniform to wear has always been entirely up to you. I still don't understand why you feel the need to apologize for wearing the dress instead of the shirt and trousers."

He wouldn't look up at her, but he could feel her penetrating blue eyes focused on his profile as she answered while adjusting the end of one of her sleeve at her left wrist, "Because I always feel like about to go out for the evening wearing this thing instead of being taken seriously as a professional. The hem on this is as short as my skirts."

The captain's first conscious thought was her referring to her black pleated skirts she loved so much, but snorted out a soft laugh without thinking while continuing looking on the PADD, "That's because blue's always been your color, you wear it so well and people love a woman in uniform. You could finally stop stealing all my old science shirts to wear when you run out because you forget to take yours to the laundry."

Benson's throat suddenly constricted as he realized what he had spoken and felt a sudden heat on his cheeks.

Doctor West cracked a smile and stuck the tip of her tongue out as it ran across her top front teeth then turned to face the three sided desk monitor located at the center of the table, refraining from commenting that his shirts were comfortable and already had the Lieutenant Commander strips on the end of the sleeves. She tried her best not to laugh as the Captain buried his attention onto the PADD.

The rest of the senior staff filtered in over the next minute or so then the Captain placed the PADD on the table and began, "Statues report Commander Gibson."

Gibby smiled and proudly commented from the other side of the table, "We are fully operational. My guys and girls are almost done patching up the hull breaches and doing a better job then those drydock boys. Once they're done, all she'll need is a new paint job. We've also fully stocked up on photon torpedoes. We're ready for a rematch."

Benson nodded his head in approval then continued, "I do have another assignment, but for the hanger deck crew: strip a shuttle down to make it look like it is a private shuttle. I don't want any indication that it ever belong to the Tori or to Star Fleet at all."

He raised a curious eyebrow then nodded his head. "Aye sir. One civilian looking shuttle coming up. I'll get them on to it right away, but how long do I have?"

"The time it takes to travel from here to Skoleos at Warp Nine."

Gibby gave him a concerned expression as he asked, "Warp Nine? They whole way?"

He gave his Chief Engineer a guarded expression as she questioned, "I thought you said we were fully operational? Can she do it or not?"

The taller gentleman sat up straighter in his seat and confidently answered, "Tori will take you anywhere and no matter how fast you want to go."

"I'm glad to hear Commander. I'm going to ask a lot of her over the next week… maybe longer."

Jade turned her seat so she could focus on his profile as she asked in concern, "Why are we going to Skoleos and what do you need a civilian shuttle for? Aren't we staying with the taskforce?"

He spared her a sideways glance as he couldn't meet her eyes and answered, "I'm going on an assignment in which I can not discuss. I just need the Tori to get me there." He glanced between Shapiro and Gibby and finished, "One of you will be assuming command for a few days."

The two senior officers nodded in acknowledgement while the dark haired doctor asked, "What kind of assignment?"

He took a breath then turned to meet her eyes. "One I cannot discuss, unless the person will be going along with me."

She was quick to snap, "Then I volunteer to go with you. You may need a doctor just like any other landing party mission."

Benson forced himself to hold his gaze on her eyes while he answered, "I appreciate the offer, but I'm sorry Doctor, but the ship needs you."

The Doctor remained silent on the point, but the stare she returned to him immediately told him that the discussion was not over between them after the staff meeting.

Brevet Major Evan Smith, the ranking marine officer on board and standing out from the other officers in their colorful uniforms in appearance with his dark olive green Combat Utility Uniform, spoke up, "I'd like to volunteer as well Captain."

The starship commander turned his attention to the marine and cordially answered, "Thank you Major, but the ship needs you as well, however if you have a suggestion for any of your marines, you can inform me after the staff meeting."

"Yes sir."

He turned back to the doctor and politely continued, "Status report on causalities."

She took a breath and answered while she continued to give him an annoyed expression, "Thirteen injured, four serious, four dead. The most serious cases have already been transferred to a hospital ship and the deceased crewmen's as well. The others will be able to recover just fine onboard."

He answered with a solemn tone, "Please inform the Chaplain that we'll be having their services this evening."

She gave him a soft nod, their disagreement forgotten for a moment, "Yes sir, but we don't have any remains for two to send back to their families. They were blown out into space from the hull breach over Ogle."

"Understood." Benson looked back to Gibby and continued, "Gibby, as soon as you get a chance, I'd like an action report about Crewman Van Cleef and any recommendation on citation. She was a member of your department."

"Yes, sir."

He looked across to the rest of the staff and asked, "Any questions or concerns about your departments?"

Brevet Major Smith was the only one to have a comment and that was in regards to him wanting to run additional security drills which Benson quickly agreed then the staff left to go about their duties.

Doctor West and Smith remained, the marine to give the Captain suggestions to accompany him on his secret mission while Jade was not through with their conversation on the matter and she was determined to get in her say now. She looked to the Smith standing on the other side of the table and commented in a curt tone, "Major, I'm sure you can speak with the Captain in a moment."

Smith had fought Klingons and Orion Pirates up close and personal with fist and bayonet and was speaking to the Captain on a matter outside the Doctor West's expertise, so being a superior officer was not applicable to her request that sounded very much like an order for him to leave. However, she was Jade West, so… he glanced to the Captain as if nonverbally asking his permission what he should do in the situation.

Benson slightly frowned then instructed, "Have a list prepared by the time of the memorial service and pick someone that understands the concept of being subtle."

Smith snapped a salute and answered, "Yes sir."

The gold shirted young man returned the salute and the marine exited the room.

As soon as the doors closed, Jade spoke up with a sharp tone, "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

He turned in his seat and met her eyes. He answered with a little bit of exasperation in his voice, "I told you, I can't tell you unless you're coming along."

"And I just said I'm volunteering to go with you."

He softly shook his head and stated with a tired voice, "You're not going."

"Then who are you taking or can you not tell me that either?"

"I'm still deciding, but I thought I'd take Shapiro or take another science officer from the taskforce. They're a few Prime Teams among the taskforce. I can pull someone from one of them. If not, Gibby can command while Shapiro and I are gone."

She crossed her arms under her chest and deeply frowned at him. "You're taking Robbie, but not me? It's always the three of us on landing party missions."

He slightly tilted his head and retorted, "This isn't just a landing party mission, it's… I can't talk about this Doctor."

She clenched her jaw tightly and stared at him coldly. She stood up from her seat and hissed out, "Fine then _Captain_, I'll talk to someone who will. Permission to leave the ship?"

He looked up to meet her eyes and thought for a moment in denying her request as he knew exactly who she wanted to see, but thought better of it and answered, "Permission granted."

She walked around him and the table and quickly exited the briefing room.

Benson slumped in his seat and blew out a breath while putting on a pensive expression.

* * *

The Doctor turned to head for the nearest turbolift, but she nearly bumped into Cat as it looked like she had been patiently waiting for Jade to exit the room. The pale young woman frowned at her friend. "Were you overhearing us?"

Cat gave a bashful expression then looked down to the deck, her tail up above her shoulder pensively waving back and forth. She softly muttered, "Good hearing, so I overhear just about everyone."

Jade crossed her arms under her chest and rolled her eyes then commented a little impatiently, "Come on, I need you to send a message to the Federation to give me permission to see the Admiral."

The Caitian instantly brightened and answered, "'kay, 'kay," then the pair were off down the corridor, but the redhead couldn't help but comment as they entered a turbolift, "You really should wear dresses more often, you look cute in them."

Jade closed her eyes and blew out a soft breath from her nose as the turbolift doors closed.

Rear Admiral Shay's Office  
USS Federation (NCC-2100)  
Federation-Class Dreadnaught  
Task Force 7, Elements of First, Second, Third and Fifth Fleets  
Docked to Mobile Basestation  
Sector 2903

After a quick trip from one pod around to another to reach the Federation, Doctor West stopped just in front of the two marines standing guard at the Admiral's office. She gave them a harsh glance and stated in no uncertain terms about the foolishness of them denying her entry, "I'm the Admiral's daughter and I want to see him, so step aside."

The pair simultaneously swallowed in fear, but remained where they were standing.

She snorted out a breath then shouted at the door, "Shay! Open up this door! I know you can hear me!"

The door opened and the marines snapped in attention.

Shay looked wide eyed at his stepdaughter and hesitantly answered, "Ja—Doctor West? I was just about to come over to the Tori to see you."

She briskly walked past him and into his office.

He slightly frowned then glanced to the two marines and asked, "Either of you two have children?"

The one standing on the right answered, "Yes sir."

"Then I can count on your discretion about family matters?"

They answered by snapping to attention, knowing other than marine honor on the line against spreading gossip, it wouldn't be too hard for the Admiral to figure out the source of said gossip then sending to some backwater assignment.

He stepped back into his office and the doors closed behind him.

She snapped around and crossed her arms under her chest. "Where are you sending him?"

Shay gave her a soft smile. "I'm glad to see you too Jade."

She snorted out in disgust, "Oh cut the fatherly crap. Where are you sending Freddie?"

He cleared his throat then answered in a professional tone, "I'm not at liberty to say."

Jade gave him a deep frown and narrowed her blue eyes on him. "You're janking rear admiral, what are you babbling about you're 'not at liberty to say'?"

He slightly tilted his head to the side, "You don't need to know."

"I don't need to know? I'm his…" She trailed off as she suddenly wasn't sure how to finish the statement.

He supplied the answer, "You're his Chief Medical Officer and the only opinion from you on this matter that counts is if he's fit for duty and the mission."

She cracked a soft smile at seeing her opening, "I can't make that determination unless I know the mission you're sending him on."

"Is he fit to command a starship? Does he have any medical problems that would impede him from carrying out his duties?"

She gave him a sarcastic smile and smugly asked, "I'm not at liberty to say. Doctor/patient confidentiality."

"Which you certainly know he doesn't have if I'm asking about his fitness for duty in an official capacity."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before releasing it. She looked back up to meet his eyes and spoke, "He's going on a mission and he's deciding personnel to go with him… order him to take me with him, so he can tell me. He's going to need a qualified doctor."

"One, you don't know that and two, I'll do no such thing."

She looked him right in the eyes and hissed out, "Why? He's never told me not to go with him on a landing party mission, but he is now and you won't tell me…" A startling thought occurred to her and whispered out, "You don't expect him or whoever is going with him to come back…" She recoiled in a bit of horror and spat in an accusing tone, "You'd send your own son-in-law on a suicide mission… it's not his fault what happened to Carly!"

He knotted his brow as he was genuinely surprised from the turn in the conversation. "Carly? What does that have anything to do with…" He knotted his brow in anger and sharply retorted, "You really think I blame him?"

She threw out her hands randomly around them and shouted in return, "You're the one that sent him on a five year mission out to the Godforsaken void as punishment! So yeah, I do."

He clenched his jaw tightly then sharply retorted, "I didn't send him out there. I didn't send him anywhere. I was not in his direct chain of command. He wanted an exploration assignment and he got one, because he earned it. He earned the Tori."

She took a step forward and shouted back, "Bullchizz! Even if you didn't, you could've pulled some string to get him assigned to Third Fleet. He didn't even need to be assigned to the border; God knows how much there's left to explore between the border, Orion and the Core that Third Fleet is still responsible for other to make sure the Klingons stay on their side of the border. He could have explored to his heart's content and still been close to home with back up at a moment's call, not out there all alone."

The Admiral countered, "He wanted Second Fleet and he had the credentials and experience for the assignment. I had no reason to second guess him and what's so wrong with that? From what got back to me from you dropping my name, you practically begged and bullied the Bureau of Medicine to be assigned to the Tori. If it's so bad, why were you willing to go out on a five-year mission with him into 'the void'? Your mother _still_ doesn't understand why."

She took a breath and slightly frowned. She slowly let it out while answering, "Because someone had to look after him and made sure he came back."

Shay gave her a sympathetic expression and took a step forward, "That's not your responsibility."

"Yes it is."

He softly shook his head and genuinely asked in curiosity, "Why?"

She set her jaw tight and answered in a strained voice, "It just is."

Shay glanced away down to the floor then looked back up to answer, "It wasn't Freddie's fault… and it wasn't yours either."

She defiantly whispered while looking him directly in the eyes when he looked back up, "You don't get to absolve me of that."

The former starfighter flyer wanted to frown at the stubbornness they shared, however, that wasn't a battle he was going to fight today. "Okay… but I'm not ordering him to take you along if he's decided not to take you."

He could see the way she stared back at him that she wanted to call him every name under the heavens, but she bit her tongue, figuratively and literally for a moment. She took several calming breaths then asked, "You have to tell me at least this: Is this a suicide mission for him?"

He rested his hands on her shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes. "Absolutely not. I'd whether him be one of my squadron commanders… keep you two close to me, but I asked him because I trust him to get the job done and come back because it is so vitally important to this war we just got dragged into." He'd snorted out a laugh, "If it was one… I'd send James Kirk on it. He's got this weird providence looking out for him."

She knotted her brow as she thought on the name then looked back up to him with a curious expression. "The 'man-whore'?"

The Admiral let out a laugh as he responded, "That's one way to describe him…"

"Can you imagine how many diseases he may have caught?" Jade let out a dismissive laugh, "Or how many kids he has running around without knowing it?"

Shay dropped his hands away from her shoulders and answered, "His charm with the ladies is legendary."

"'Charm'? If I ever meet him and he tries to turn his 'charm' on me, they're going to need to clone him a new set of balls."

The gentleman let out a soft laugh as didn't doubt the girl's statement and felt a momentary bit of pity towards the starship commander.

The laughter died down then Jade asked in a timid voice, "Is he going to be alright."

"I believe he will be… maybe you should just tell Freddie how you feel about the situation? You know it just might make a difference."

She cracked a soft smile and retorted, "I thought I'd just bug him until he gave in. It's not like he could resist me forever."

"Is that why you wore the dress? I know how much you hate that thing."

She crossed her arms under her chest and glared at him.

He let out a chuckle and raised his hands up. "Hey, your mother's look like that doesn't work on me; it's not going to work for you."

She rolled her eyes and blew out a breath. She shook her head and commented, "I got to get back to the Tori."

He suggested with a hopeful tone, "I thought you could at least for a while to catch up? Let you know what's going on back home… with Spencer and Ian… stay for coffee. I got the good stuff, not any of that replicated mess I know you can tell the difference and hate."

Jade's eyes shot open like a kid in a candy store and quickly asked, "You have real coffee?"

He returned with a bright smile. "The Jet Brew blend you love."

She glanced down at the deck and tightened her arms over her upper abdomen and whispered, "Can I have some coffee?"

Shay smiled and took a step forward to wrap his arms around her in a hug and kissed her forehead. He thought about making a joke that she was just as bad as her mother with the coffee, but let it go to just whisper, "Of course you can have some coffee."

She pulled her arms from around herself and returned the hug. She pulled away slightly and slightly smirked as she commented, "You know you've always done the fatherly crap pretty good."

"Well it's easy when I love you."

She let out a soft chuckle at the truth of his statement and the backhanded insult to her questionable biological father Roy West's behavior. "So, how about you get me that coffee and get me some more recent pictures of Ian. Mine are a few weeks out of date being out on the edge of the final frontier."

The Admiral smiled at the moment of peace that they were going to be able to share in the mists of what was about to turn into Armageddon for the Federation.

Captain's Quarters  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
1852 Hours  
Stardate 2267.154 (June 3, 2267)

The service for the four lost souls of the starship Tori was short and respectful as to allow the crew to go about their duties as they did find themselves in a war, but one that Captain Benson feared was going to be all too typical in the future.

After the service, the Captain was back in his quarters sharing dinner with Jade as they did each night, however this evening the pair remained silent as they ate dinner across from one another at the captain's desk.

He was silent due to being lost in his thoughts from the last several days, the assignment at hand and the service dragging up memories that he desperately needed to bury so he could get his job done.

However, Benson was surprised that of all things Jade was giving him the silent treatment as she was never one to hold back what she thought to him, especially since as ship's doctor she had a little more leeway in speaking to him as the captain which she used at every opportunity. He figured as soon as they started eating that she would lay into him about his mission and his refusal to allow her to join. He had been quite surprised.

Jade finally did break the silence as she looked the Captain straight in the eyes and whispered, "I'm going on this mission with you and I'm not arguing over this with you. You need me as a doctor, an expert in exobiology, a phaser markswoman to watch your back and as a person whose judgment can absolutely count on… not some stranger you're pulling off a personnel file list that doesn't know you and… I need to make sure you come back and the only way I can do that is to go with you…" She lowered her eyes and finished in a lower whisper, "…please don't make me beg you over this."

The starship captain took a breath and sat up straighter in his seat. He answered in a reassuring tone, "As intriguing it would be to watch Jade West beg… I'm coming back. It isn't a suicide mission."

"Then why don't you want me to go with you? How many planets have we gone down to? Two, three dozen?"

"Fine!"

She sucked in a sharp breath at him snapping at her.

"I don't want to put you into danger in something that is specifically and clearly a military mission. You'll be far safer on the Tori with your father's taskforce and if I had my way, you'd be on Earth behind the entire First Fleet, Earth and Mars' National Guard fleets and a combined planetary defense system of Earth and Luna that make even the Klingons chizz their pants in fear of taking it on."

Jade looked down at the desk and her shoulders slumped while Freddie looked away in embarrassment.

They sat quietly for about a minute with neither touching their food. Jade spoke softly, "I love you too, but I'm here because I want to be and I want to be with you on this mission."

He challenged one last time in a tired voice, "You have no idea what I'm going to do… what if I intend to charge the Gates of Hell?"

She cracked a wicked smile and answered, "Then I guess I'll be following you to the Gates of Hell."

He slightly shook his head and snorted out a laugh, "You're not letting this go?"

She crossed and rested her forearms on the desk to lean forward and smirked while answering, "When have I ever let anything go?"

He rolled his eyes thinking of the time back in high school of some 'pretty boy' actor, but refrained from commenting then pressed a stud on his desk for the intercom to turn on and stated, "Commander Shapiro, would you please report to my quarters?"

"Wait? Why do I have to put up with Robbie as a third wheel to _our_ dinner?"

He snorted out a laugh, "The price to pay for going along: sitting through a briefing dinner with Robbie."

She groaned and rolled her eyes then popped a Betazed uttaberry into her mouth to try to dissuade her annoyance.

* * *

Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this setup and character insight chapter. The next one picks the action back up for your reading pleasure. Oh, about Star Fleet uniforms in this, I'll cheat and assume they are more durable and like J.J. Abrams' Trek uniforms, but the difference is that in TOS, the skirts were shorter than in his movies. This is the Trek when men were men and women wore miniskirts :D I'm also using the J.J. Abrams' Stardate System. Also, since I'm borrowing from the Star Fleet Universe, there is going to be a separate Federation Marine Corps outside standard Redshirt security like the MACOs from _Enterprise_. Take care.  
Special Guest Star Joe Flanigan as Rear Admiral Steven 'Loco' Shay


	4. Chapter 4: Now this is Clubbing

Hello everyone! I have another chapter for you and hope you enjoy it. I'm glad of publishing a scifi chapter as today is the 66th Anniversary of the reporting of the crash at Roswell… which was either a Ferengi shuttle from DS9 or a crashed Old Kings vessel from Star Fleet Universe.

Imperius-Rexford: Well thank you, I hope you continued to enjoy this story.

This isn't going to be like J.J. Abrams _Trek_ where Vulcans are continued to be portrayed from _Star Trek: Enterprise_ as racist, homophobes that hate people with HIV and hope they died (yes, that was an actual storyline on _Enterprise_ and B&B wonder why Paramount took Trek away from them after that) or would play Judas on you after saving his life or whiny starship captains because they were raised by their widowed mother (which statistically speaking he should have been _more_ level headed than canon Kirk) or where internal reality is denied that Klingons are aggressive conquerors and war with them is inevitable as 'Errand of Mercy' clearly showed. However, I will borrow other more acceptable things from his reimaging as I've done with his version of Caitians for Cat's species.

I do have my preferences in pairings, but I have no set pairings in this story and I will not rule out pairings happening that may naturally develop out of the story.

I've used Joe Flanigan as Steven Shay for years, long before Dan cast one for iGoodbye because I assumed he was just like his buddy Colonel Morgan: a former flyer that got into Special Forces after a successful flying career, so I needed an actor that the reader would believe was such and was a pretty good close age at the same time.

Agent-M-0167: Thanks. It would have been four in four, but I wanted to do some double checking before I posted this update. I obviously can't keep up this update rate due to my other projects, but I wanted a good start.

Fanfic-Reader-88: Well Shay explained what Freddie has to do, so I guess as a reader, he feels that this mission is more dangerous than beaming down to a planet with a bunch of redshirts (Rule 52 Why Kirk is better than Picard). What happened to Carly is a spoiler.

Challenge King: They deeply care about one another, maybe too deeply to effectively serve together, but that is the way it is for them.

Rating: Probably up to M due to Violence and Brief nudity

* * *

Chapter 4: Now this is Clubbing

Bridge  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Stardate 2267.155  
(June 4, 2267)

A random crewmember shouted as Captain Benson stepped out of the turbolift and unto the bridge, "Captain on the Bridge."

Captain Benson took the Command Seat and called out over his shoulder to the redheaded Caitian, "Valentine, get me the dock master."

"Aye, aye, Skipper… you're on sir."

He held back a smirk as he let the redhead have far too much leeway in etiquette and protocol, but she just so sweet and innocent… until her claws came out and could shred a man to pieces as they could be just as deadly as their cousins the Kzinti. On the bright side, they wouldn't eat you as a Kzinti given the opportunity.

"This is Captain Benson requesting permission to depart."

The female dock-master replied over the intercom, _"Permission granted Tori."  
_

"Cohen, clear all moorings then engage port thrusters."

The brunette helmswoman answered as she tapped her controls, "Clearing all moorings, aye sir… engaging port thrusters."

Cat called out, "Sir, I have a voice message from Admiral Shay."

"On speakers Lieutenant."

Admiral Shay's voice called out, _"Godspeed to the brave crew of the USS Tori."_

"Thank you Admiral." Benson softly smiled then commanded, "Navigation, set your course for sector thirty-seven zero four, the Skoleos system and Helm, engage at Warp _Nine_ once we're clear of the base's patrol perimeter."

Powers called out with a smirk, "Aye Captain."

Cohen called out, "Aye sir."

Hanger Deck  
USS Tori (NCC-1725)  
Just outside the Skoleos System  
Stardate 2267.160 (June 9, 2267)

After six days and more than ten thousand light-years of travel, the Tori approached at low impulse speed to the outskirts of the Skoleos System.

Captain Benson was the first one to arrive on the Hanger Deck in civilian clothes of a black just past waist length Star Fleet field jacket stripped of all insignia or markings that it was Star Fleet (you couldn't go wrong with concealed body armor), navy blue Henley under one of his ever present flannel patterned button shirts and blue jeans.

As he waited for the others to arrive, he double checked his micro-tricorder in his right inside pocket. It didn't have the functionality of a full modern tricorder, but it did have the advantage of being smaller as a handheld cut down model similar in appearance to the ones used back in the days just before the Earth-Romulan War, but far greater capabilities. After satisfied that it was functioning, he double checked his phaser pistol that Brevet Major Smith was kind to have one of his weapons smiths modify to make it look like a civilian model. He was sliding the weapon into the inside built in holster of the jacket, but stopped when he heard the turbolift doors opened and turned to see who arrived.

Benson's throat caught as he saw Doctor West exit the turbolift and enter the Hanger Deck. Jade was in her civilian clothes of her black leather jacket, a heavy black athletic undershirt, medium blue jeans and black boots. She put in blue hair extensions that would have matched her blue uniform if she was wearing it. However, the other most noticeable thing he noticed as she walked closer was a ring piecing of the far side of her left eyebrow and a nose stud on her right nostril of her nose.

She gave him as smirk and raised the pierced eyebrow as she questioned, "How do I look? Do I look like a Star Fleet officer now?"

He finished holstering his weapon then gave her another up and down glance and answer after clearing his throat, "Ah… no." He motioned to her hair and face and awkwardly commented, "It's been a while since I've seen you like that."

She ran a hand through her curly dark locks, "Yeah, pulled out some old favorites: the extensions and piercings." She wiggled her nose and commented, "I actually had to re-pierce them as they had closed up after all this time."

"I should take a picture for your mom. I know she would be 'thrilled' for you to have them back."

The Doctor narrowed her eyes on him to dare him to do such a thing. After a moment they both broke out into a soft laugh then as she was calming down questioned, "We ready to go?"

"We're waiting for Shapiro."

She rolled her eyes and muttered, "Of course we are… he's probably being held up by Cat."

Benson slightly frowned as he dryly commented, "I'll give him a few more minutes. I don't know how long we'll be gone, so let them have their moment."

"I don't care about them having a moment. I just wished they'd stop it with the 'will they/won't they' thing and just make a decision about whether they want to be together and not worry about being different species."

Brevet Major Smith was standing off to the side with Commander Gibson to issue out sidearms to the doctor and Commander Shapiro before departing and coughed out, "Not the only two playing it."

Jade snapped her head and glared at the marine major then hissed out, "I'm sorry _Brevet Major_; I didn't quite catch that?"

The marine cleared this throat then answered, "Just clearing my throat ma'am." He took another step towards her and brought up a small weapon's case. He held it with one forearm and opened it with his free hand. He pulled out and handed the Doctor a Type-II pistol phaser and two power pack magazines.

Jade knotted her brow as she examined the weapon. "What's with the black color scheme?" she questioned in reference to the embedded Type-I phaser in the pistol phaser and grip being black instead of the standard red color.

He snorted out a laugh, "Makes someone think it's a common knockoff one instead of the real deal. All traces of it ever being registered as a Star Fleet weapon has been scrubbed, but they'll get a real surprise when it has _all_ the settings."

She softly smirked at the marine and softly retorted, "Let's hope the stun setting is the only one I have to use."

"Let's hope you don't have to use it at all ma'am."

She cracked a friendly smile, his half stray comment forgotten and answered while she stuffed the weapon and magazines in the custom made holster and magazine carrier in the left inside flap of her jacket, "Let's hope you're right."

Commander Shapiro arrived a few moments later with the turbolift door opening with Cat accompanying him.

Jade slightly frowned and commented, "You're late."

The science officer started trying to mutter out an excuse, but saved him from an explanation with Cat wrapping her arms around Jade's waist and pulled her tightly against her while her tail tickled the back of the Doctor's neck.

The dark haired doctor slightly frowned from the tickling sensation, but returned the hug.

The communications purred out a soft laugh then released her friend. She turned to the captain and hugged him too.

Benson kept his arms out and cleared his throat then delicately commented, "Lieutenant?"

She pulled away and brushed over the front of her mini-dress uniform and let out another laugh.

He dryly asked, "What am I going to do with you?"

The redhead reacted with another soft purring laugh that caused even Benson to smile.

Robbie picked up his sidearm from Smith then he and Jade headed for the shuttle, while the Captain stayed for a moment to speak with Gibby and Smith. "The ship is yours Commander and Major… the Tori will not be any prize for the Empire; is that understood?"

He snapped off a salute and answered, "Yes, sir."

Benson returned the salute then turned to head for the shuttle, but stopped and watched Jade enter the shuttle, the doctor pausing only a moment to look over her shoulder at the captain before stepping completely inside.

Gibby took a step beside the Captain cleared his throat then leaned over and whispered, "I personally checked the shuttle from bow to stern. She'll bring _her_ back."

Benson glanced down at the deck plate and whispered, "Thanks Gibby."

The engineer patted his captain on the shoulder then Benson headed for the shuttlecraft.

Skoleos  
Sector 3704  
Federation Space  
Stardate 2267.160 (June 9, 2267)

Ever since Captain James T. Kirk's fateful meeting with the Gorn over Cestus Three and the single combat between him and the Gorn captain on a planet provided by yet another possibly godlike species the Metrons, the border had become a trading hotspot between the two powers with the Skoleos acting as mediators as they shared a unique position. The Skoleos were a Federation Associate Member race that had very good relations with the Gorns proximity to their space and due to their similar natures as a species of being like Earth chameleons with lean and wiry builds.

This relationship however was resented by some in the Federation Council as the Skoleos had failed to inform them that Cestus Three was in Gorn space before it was established and led directly to the needless massacre of the entire population, including women and children and leading to questioning how loyal they were to the Federation and a few calls to have them expelled as members. Fortunately in many ways that discussion was quickly tabled with the Gorn paying for reparations for the attack and executing their own starship commander as a war criminal.

After that and contrary to one might expect from the Gorn's ferocious appearance, the only aggression truly between the Federation and Gorn Confederation was economic as the two star nations shared the desire to have peaceful relations with their interstellar neighbors.

However, one still had to give pause when a Gorn walked passed which there were several as Captain Benson and his officers walked into a bustling multilevel club located within the spaceport complex to meet their 'travel agent'. The time was night on this side of the planet and the party was already getting started in the club with flashing of different color strobe lights, music from several different languages playing at the same time and the dance floors filled with scantily clad young people of probably a dozen species.

The floors of the second and third levels were made of transparent aluminum, allowing the patrons on the lower floors to look up at their fellow dancers. Robbie trailing behind cleared his throat while looking up to the second floor as he noticed a number of the females wearing skirts on the second level were clearly not wearing underwear… and some had both sex organs.

As they passed a group of tall tables lining the right side of the establishment, a Kzinti female noticed Robbie and let out a soft hiss to catch his attention. The science officer paused at the familiar feline hiss and turned to look at the felinoid. She hooked her right thumb under the spaghetti strap of her colorful top and pulled it down to flash him one of her three supple breasts then pulled the strap back into place. Robbie freezing at the sight gave her all the time she needed to gracefully walk over to him.

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and smiled to him, but a moment later she hissed at him, apparently smelling Cat's scent on him and recognizing it was a Caitian scent. The two species may have been supposedly related, but there was no love lost between them.

Robbie thought for a second that she was going to sink her teeth into his throat, but she screamed out in pain and turned to her left to see Jade glaring at her and firmly stepping on the Kzinti's tail.

Jade hissed out, "Go sink your claws into someone else; he's not a meal and he's taken."

She was about to lung at the pale doctor, but looked down to see that Jade had slipped her phaser out from her jacket. Apparently staring down at the phaser pointed at her caused her to reconsider her actions and took a step back.

Jade released the woman's tail and she headed back to her table. The Doctor glance at Robbie with the same annoyed expression.

He muttered out apologetically, "I'm sorry, the purr was familiar."

The blue streaked hair doctor shook her head and slipped her phaser back in the holster then turned to catch up with the Captain.

Despite the strobe light show and sounds of the club, the trio was able to make their way through the crowd with Jade dodging a handful of patrons wanting to have a dance with her and they found the 'travel agent' sitting in a more exclusive cordoned off area near the back of the club on the first floor.

Beck Oliver at the moment was seated in the center of a half circle couch behind a glass table with several lovely, but scantily clad young ladies sitting with him: a blond, a redhead and a raven haired Orion (non-slave girl) while enjoying his drink. He was a sharply dressed young man with nearly shoulder length hair wearing probably the latest fashions of his homeworld which looked like he had just stepped out of a royal court with his long purple coat, white frills button shirt and blue slacks.

The ladies weren't the only ones with him as he was speaking with an Orion gentleman with a marking on his jacket that Benson instantly recognized as the insignia of the Orion pirates operating in this area of space and guarded by a rough looking human and two Gorn with about half a dozen more Gorn sitting in a neighboring VIP seating enjoying the evening and entertaining some female Skoleos.

Benson wearily eyed the bodyguards and the other Gorn as he led the three to the other end of the table and politely questioned, "Mister Oliver?"

The tall human around the same age as Benson gave him a cold expression and slightly moved his hand towards the inside of his jacket, a motion Jade mimicked towards her own jacket.

"Yes, what can I—oh, Mister Benson?" He smiled at the starship commander and motioned for him to walk closer and have a seat on the other side of the half-circle booth.

The brown eyed young man passed the human bodyguard another glance, but Beck reassured him, "Oh, don't mind Randy. He's a good fellow."

Benson threw him one more guarded glance before he and Jade had a seat on the other side with Robbie remaining standing off to the side and watch the proceedings.

Beck passed another word to the Orion gentleman and he departed, throwing an annoyed expression at the pair. The long haired gentleman continued with a pleasant tone, with a particular eye on Jade, "Greetings, I'm Beck Oliver and you are Mister Benson and Miss West?"

The Captain returned the smile, "Yes we are, but before we begin, I was under the impression you were a legitimate businessman from your sector of space."

The handsome gentleman's smile faltered, but quickly recovered with a laugh, "I assure you, I'm a legitimate businessman."

Benson gave him a soft smirk as he replied, "There's not much legitimate business you can do with the Orion Pirate Cartels. They're pirates, plain and simple. If you want to get more complicated, they're criminals, mercenaries, raiders, slavers, spies, and smugglers."

He smiled to the pair despite the fact that the Orion young lady with him frowned. "I'm new to this sector of space. I'm originally from Corellia and since the hyperspace disturbance barrier that separated the two halves of the galaxy has disappeared, I'm just one of many taking the opportunity to expand my business in new territories and getting a 'lay of the land' as your people might say. I'm figuring out who I can and who I cannot do business with."

Benson motioned with a finger at one of the imposing Gorn. "I see maybe you already made a good choice with such 'friends'. An Orion is going to think twice before messing with a Gorn."

"It's always good to meet and greet new customers and employ a local guide. It's a good way to stimulate the local economy and reassure them that you're serious in doing business and as I point out, figure out who I can do legitimate business with."

The more muscular young man nodded his head and Beck took that as a signal that he could get on with business. He leaned back in his seat and smirked to the pair, giving the doctor a particularly long glance, "Now what can I do for you and your _very_ lovely girlfriend? Your message was a little vague about wanting transport."

Benson frowned at the playboy business man while Jade replied with a teasing smile. She placed her hand over Freddie's right hand and gently squeezed it while looking Beck straight in the eyes. "We're looking for fast, safe passage to the other side, away from the fighting and safely start a family. We're hoping to find an out of the way spot so we can blend in." She let out a sweet laugh and motioned her head over her right shoulder. "Along with my brother."

Beck looked passed her to see a curly hair young man nervously laugh his way out of an apparent awkward conversation with a Gorn.

The pale young doctor continued with an affectionate tone, "He always seems to get himself into trouble and I can't leave him behind. Who'd take care of him?"

The long haired business man continued with a charming smile, "I'm Corellian; my people understand the importance of family bonds."

She returned with an equally charming smile, as if to tempt him to further flirt with her despite the fact she was sitting beside Freddie and holding his hand.

"So you three want to get out of the way of the fighting? I can't say that I blame you. This sector's obviously next on the Imperial's list. After they take this sector, they take a left to destroy the border battle-station and leave your north-east wide open so they can attack my new Gorn friends or take a right and destroy your starbase, leaving your entire Northeastern Region of your Federation without any organized resistance and a free straight line to your core worlds."

Benson cracked a soft smile, instinctively wanting to correct him that 'straight line' meant going through seven additional sectors with several major systems and installations before reaching the core systems (assuming the Imperials didn't just bypass those sectors with their advance FTL drive). The Captain decided to take a different approach, "I didn't realize you were a strategist."

"I can read one of your public starmaps and see the major trade routes."

Benson raised an eyebrow to concede the point. The Federation was far more open with their internal composition than the other star nations.

Beck took a sip from his drink then continued, "I have a perfect guy that I do business with on a regular basis… ah outside contractor that I use for my high priority shipments and I think will suit your needs. I went ahead and sent for him so he's already on the planet, but he doesn't come cheap nor does my finders fee. I'm going to need some hard currency, not some Federation credit that's going to be worthless in a month."

Jade leaned forward with her right elbow against the table and her right hand fingers lazily playing with an old Shay family cross pendant just above her cleavage showing from her scoop neck shirt, and teasingly answered, "I think we'll be able to do manage to pay for your services." She caught him taking a quick glimpse at her cleavage, apparently appreciating the view of the real thing than the artificial ones were currently surrounding him. Her smile grew slightly bigger in knowing she had just hooked him with drawing his attention to her 'assets' from a simple, 'innocent' gesture of playing with her necklace.

Beck cleared his throat and motioned for Randy. "Randy, would you please inform the captain that his passengers have arrived?"

The tall, muscular bodyguard nodded his head then started on his way.

Beck raised his glass and toasted, "May you two have beautify babies."

Jade immediately felt Freddie's hand slightly flinch under her hand still resting on top of his hand at the mentioning of having children, but fortunately Beck was too preoccupied with taking a sip from his drink and stealing glances at the doctor.

Benson remained silent, but Jade covered by continuing to smile and answered, "Thank you for that support."

A moment or so later, Randy returned with two gentleman about the same age as the Captain. Benson turned his attention to the pair and gave them look once over. The first young man was just slightly taller than Benson, but a slimmer build wearing a black leather jacket with a gray hood, a button shirt equivalent to a Henley and what Benson guessed was the other gentleman's civilization's version of denim or he had just purchased a pair within the Federation. What was most striking to that starship captain was that the freighter captain wore a right thigh holster with sidearm tucked into it as if he had just stepped out of an old Earth US Western with apparently no concern with a no visible weapons policy in the establishment. The other odd thing he noticed was a silver cylinder attached to the weapon belt.

The second gentleman was even taller, but lanky with wild curly sandy hair with antiquated glasses of all things on his face and if bared a resemblance to crewman Van Cleef. He was dressed similar to the first one, but carried with him an energy carbine weapon lazily hanging beside his hip.

Benson noticed that the first gentleman held his gaze on Jade for a few seconds, but unlike the other patrons or Beck that were ogling her (and the freighter captain's companion), it looked to him that his gaze was one of confused recognition. The first young man was the first to speak with a formal, but guarded greeting in a surprisingly mild US Southern accent, "I'm Captain Dusty Hale of the Millennium Falcon." He motioned to his side with a nod of his head. "This is my first mate Sinjin and I understand from Oliver that you would like safe and quick passage to somewhere safe, away from the fighting?"

Jade pleasantly smiled and answered with attention of using the same charm, "Yes, my boyfriend and brother would like to get away and start our family and we understand your ships are far faster than anything in the known galaxy."

She was somewhat surprised that instead of being enticed like the others, he returned with a sympathetic expression and equally sympathetic tone, "We can take you someplace safe."

Beck laughed out, "Great, we can talk about money. Why don't we go somewhere a little more private to work out the details?" Just as the business man from the other side of the galaxy stood up, he was knocked back in his seat as the entire establishment shook, sending many of the dancing patrons to the floor and screaming out in shock and pain.

Benson grabbed Jade tightly to him and held onto the table until the rocking ceased.

A klaxon started blaring throughout the entire spaceport. It only meant one of two things: there had been a major accident or they were under attack. The answer came quickly as energy weapons fire could be heard outside.

Beck stood up on his feet and shouted, "Ladies, it's time for us to go!"

As to accentuate his point, the building rocked again with a number of red armored soldiers burst through the main entrance after killing the bouncers.

Benson slithered out of the booth and pulled Jade out with him. He turned to face the incoming troops and shield her as the crouched down. He took only a moment to let go of her hand to pull out his phaser and set it to one-quarter then grasped her right hand with his left hand.

The lead trooper shouted, "This establishment is under the control of the Galactic Empire! Until we have fully secured the surrounds you are to remain lying or seated on the floor then you will be allowed to return to your homes as we will be establishing marshal law!"

A great number of them followed the instructions and dropped to the floor to huddle or lie down; however, someone didn't like it as the next moment he was hit by a gorn disruptor bolt into his armored chest. He fell backwards in a heap as apparently his armor was no match against the high energy weapon.

The response was immediately from the other troopers as they started storming further into the establishment and opening up with automatic fire trying to kill the person that killed their commanding officer. Red blaster bolts started flying throughout the club as if they were part of the lightshow, but with lethal results when those patrons still standing were cut down from the contact of the high energy particles striking flesh, cauterizing flesh, muscle, internal organs and bone together in an unnatural mixture.

The screams of terror and pain became louder than the music still playing and the high pitch whine of blaster fire.

Benson snapped his head around to ask Beck if there was a back way out, but the Corillian was already dashing out with Randy and his girls while the gorn moved forward and firing away with their disruptors. The Orion girl bringing up the rear was not so fortunate as a stray blaster bolt struck her at her right shoulder blade and spun her completely around to drop on her back.

Jade pulled away from behind Freddie to crawl towards her. She pulled out her medical micro-tricorder and started scanning the young woman. The Orion opened and closed her mouth, but only spoke gargling sounds as blood started filling her mouth.

The troopers continue to surge forward and blasting all in their way trying to get to the gorn as they figured out that they were the ones that started firing which meant the Imperial troops had turned their full attention in the direction of the Star Fleet officers.

As the troopers and gorn closed with one another, one stray bolt then another struck the ceiling, blasting holes in the transparent aluminum and instantly causing spider cracks through the whole floor. A moment later the inevitable happened and the floor buckled from the weight of the patrons trying to escape the floor. Giant shards of the floor came down along with dozens of people dropping about four meters.

The larger intact pieces of aluminum smashed on several people, breaking and crushing bone for those that it didn't outright kill while smaller pieces sliced through skin and sending blood pouring. Of course on top of that carnage, those that fell smashed into patrons below, their fall being broken on either aluminum below that fell below their feet or on other individuals.

Jade threw herself on top of her patient as the others covered their heads. Fortunately they were far enough back from any of the ceiling or people collapsing on them.

Red Skynaut troopers continued firing and walked over injured people, not caring for their suffering, only not to slip on various pools of blood from shards slicing up people.

As soon as blaster fire was going over their heads, Benson leveled his arm up and squeezed the trigger, sending a red phaser beam at the Skynaut and burning through the red armor. The shock trooper fell backwards in a heap, a good portion of his chest cauterized.

The starship captain raised his arm slightly to train on the following trooper, but before he could squeeze the trigger again, the trooper's head exploded into a gory mess of cauterized flesh, brain and bone from a red blaster bolt hitting him in the face and leaving a bloody stump neck stump. The body of the trooper slopped backwards in a heap.

Benson turned his head slightly to see that it was Dusty that fired the shot from his blaster that bore a resemblance to an old German Mauser C96 firearm. The freighter captain bent down slightly beside Benson and felt a hand cup under his right arm to try to pull him and Dusty shouting, "Come on!"

The starship captain turned and crawled just in time for Dusty to train his weapon on another trooper and fire another bolt. The bolt struck the trooper in the chest and it punched through the armor and sending the trooper tumbling backwards.

Robbie was firing off phaser pulses at the approaching troopers, finding some concealment behind an overturned table while the freighter captain's first mate was sending burst fire from his carbine down at the advancing troopers, striking several troopers. The combination of fire from them and the gorn stopped the Skynauts' advance.

By some miracle, most of the gorn had survived the onslaught at this point and had closed to hand-to-hand combat with the Skynauts. One gorn bodyguard grabbed a trooper, picked him up then literally snapped him in half over his knee. He tossed the poor soul in the direction of other troopers. The trooper's wrecked body collided with his comrades and they were sent tumbling to the ground. Another gorn punched a trooper in the face, his red helmet giving him little protection as he collapsed to the ground.

Benson crawled to Jade while continuing to lend fire to the gorn keeping the troopers at bay as they fought over the fallen patrons under their feet. The Captain slightly turned to pull Jade away as she was still trying to attend to the fallen Orion and placed the hypospray to her neck and a soft hissing sound was made from the contact.

Dusty was faster and shouted to the Doctor, "We got to go!"

The blue eyed woman shouted, "I can't leave her to die!"

"I'm not arguing with you!" Dusty gripped her tightly around her waist and yanked her to her feet then started forcing her to walk, using himself as a shield as he walked to the back of the club, turning back slightly to fire a few more shots into the troopers.

Benson shouted, "Shapiro, we're getting out of here."

Dusty shouted as he shoved Jade towards a crouching Benson, "Sinjin let's give them some cover! Pour it on them!"

The science officer complied with his Captain and started crawling towards the back of the club. Jade was about to fight Freddie on the issue as soon as he had caught her, but one look in his eyes told her that nothing would persuade him. She turned and the three Star Fleet officers made went as fast as they could walk in a crouching potion to the back exit as Dusty kept firing and Sinjin swapped out an energy clip from his carbine then started spraying on full auto. The pair started walking backwards to make their way to the same back exit.

They finally stopped firing as those troopers that were still alive were too busy fighting the surviving gorn and dashed out the back.

The Orion woman coughed up additional blood and slowly choked on it as her body heaved and spasm, but she felt no pain from the hypospray. She stared at the ceiling of the third floor of people desperately trying to escape while her life slipped away.

* * *

Author's Note: I said it was a war story and there would be violence and there it was in all its gory glory. I lot of poor people just bought it. I finally started showing the Galaxy Wars parody parts this is meant to be: acknowledgement of a different color scheme to phasers and instead of Stormtroopers, they are Red Skynauts. If you're curious as to what they look like, you can always look them up from Drake & Josh and the costume Spencer wore in iHalf-o-ween. Randy was Randy Bronson from a cut scene in Tori and Jade's Playdate. I hope you enjoy. Later.


	5. Chapter 5: Part Where We Escape

Hey everyone! I got a new chapter for you. I wish I could have posted sooner, but I've been busy with some other writing. I hope you enjoy it.

Agent-M-0167: For this Parody/Fusion Fic, Dusty and Sinjin are basically taking the place of Han and Chewie. I hope this short chapter satisfies you.

Challenge King: Thanks. I thought Beck's portrayal was a bit of what he would be like if he wasn't attached and could embrace the role of a ladies man. It's war and war is bloody and violent.

Fanfic-Reader-88: Unfortunately, innocent people always get caught in the crossfire. They were all running off, he just got out first.

illusorygentleman: It is Galaxy WARS so there has to be some action. Jade is still Jade underneath the professionalism, which I think is a part of her character anyway as the Victorious character is the most focused one for their profession. Nameless, faceless people die in war and it is tragic because they have people that care for them.

Rating: High T Violence

* * *

Chapter 5: Part Where We Escape

The quintet made it out the back and started running behind the building to make it for the hangers. Benson had took the lead then stopped at a corner and looked around, phaser pointed low ready to bring it up and drop anyone that would try to round the corner. He took the quickest of peeks around to see red body armored troopers spreading out to secure the surrounding buildings. High pitched whining streaked overhead, catching their attention of the Imperial bow looking fighters soaring overhead to give the troopers complete air supremacy.

Once he saw that their direction was being ignored, he led them the short gap between the buildings to run by the back perimeter of the next building. They did this leap frog maneuver several times until they finally reached the end of the last building then took a quick dash along the side until they reached several cargo containers to crouch behind them. They watched as the Skolean security traded phaser fire with the Imperials' blasters on the open runways and landing pads. They were putting up a pretty good fight in trying to hold the spaceport as the Red Skynauts were disembarking from their troop transports dominating the center of the runway and trying to secure the spaceport. However it was only a matter of time before they would be overrun from the sheer numbers and heavier firepower.

Dusty whispered with his blaster held to the side of his face while glancing between gaps in the containers, "They're trying to take the spaceport to—"

Benson picked up, "—establish as their beachhead to easily move men and material in while cutting off escape." He spat out in disgust, "We have perfect timing."

The freighter captain spat out, "I don't believe in luck and I don't intend to live out some Imperial occupation and you don't want to either, so you still have that ride with us if you want."

Benson idly commented as he continued to watch the firefight, "We can't pay you now, not yet anyway."

Dusty looked to the furious expressions on Jade's face who wasn't even looking at him and whispered in an apologetic tone, "It's on me for forcing you to let that girl die back there."

The lovely doctor turned her head to look to him with a surprised expression as her anger faded for a second.

Dusty didn't give her the time to further think on it as he motioned with his sidearm to their right. "Sinj, you're going to take them and circle around the long way to the Falcon. You're going to steal one of those Federation airspeeders to make it."

His companion asked in concern, "What are you going to do?"

"Something very, very crazy to give you a chance to make it." He patted his friend on the shoulder then instructed, "Go!"

Sinjin didn't get a chance to move as Dusty holstered his weapon then stood up and started making a surprisingly quick dashed towards a parked wheeled fuel truck, faster than a human should have made the run. The idea ran through Benson's mind that the freighter captain could have some physical augmentation, which in the Federation would have been quite illegal.

Sinjin motioned with his carbine and then started making a run in a crouching position to the abandoned hovercar. As soon as he reached it, he smashed the passenger window with the butt of the carbine then reached inside to unlock the door. He slid inside and opened up the underneath panel under the steering wheel. He pulled some of the wires out and tried to hotwire the vehicle.

The three officers kept lookout to see that no one had noticed them while he went about his work. However it was taking too long in Jade's opinion and she complained, "How did he figure you were going to use the hovercar if you can't hotwire it?"

He snapped back, "I'm not exactly familiar with your technology."

Shapiro rattled off what sounded like pure technobabble, but apparently the first mate understood it and soon the hovercar came to life. Sinjin let out a laugh and slid into a sitting position and the others climbed inside.

Dusty climbed up the side of the cabin, opened the door and slipped into the driver's side seat. He quickly glanced around to see if there was a set of keys. He finally found them stuffed in the sun visor of the vehicle; apparently Skoleans liked keeping their keys in the same place as various types of humans. He started the vehicle, he pressed the accelerator and turned the wheel to pull the vehicle out of its parking spot.

Apparently the Skynauts and Skoleans were willing to leave the truck alone as they weren't interesting of setting off a truck full of fuel in the middle of their fire fight. However, the truck caught their attention as Dusty turned the vehicle towards one of the Sentinel-class landing craft and floored the accelerator.

The fuel truck barreling towards one of the shuttles certainly started catching some of the troopers' attention and started opening firing. Several shouts punched through the windshield, but missed the driver while others hit the engine block. The acceleration cut out on the truck, but the continued rolling forward at the landing craft.

Dusty found that this was the opportune time to push open the door and throw himself out of the truck and rolled against the ground to break his fall. He rolled onto his hands and knees just in time to see some troopers dodging out of its way and it colliding against the transport shuttle.

A giant fireball and billowing smoke shot up and consumed the troop transport and the troopers still trying to exit it as it was doused with the volatile fuel, lighting the night sky and drawing everyone's attention. Flames quickly spread to a neighboring transport and started engulfing it.

A fortunate trooper that hadn't been caught in the fire or explosion approached Dusty with his rifled raised.

Dusty reached to his belt and pulled the silver cylinder away from his belt.

Apparently the trooper recognized the object and immediately raised his weapon to look down the sights, but he wasn't fast enough as Dusty activated the object and a blue beam emitted out of the end. He swung upward in a diagonal, slicing the trooper in half from his right to his left shoulder. A half of a trooper collapsed on either side in a cauterized gory mess.

Dusty blew out a breath through his teeth and stood up.

A few other troopers that weren't trying to flee for their lives from the burning transports or fighting it out with the security forces that witnessed the killing paused for a moment at seeing the space cowboy holding the elegant weapon from a more civilized time. Unfortunately that pause cost them their lives as he held up his left hand and the next moment they were off their feet and flying into the air… right into the consuming fire.

They were instantly engulfed in flames and started cooking in their battle armor with their dying screams filled the air.

Dusty ignored their screams as he turned away and tried to spot the hovercar.

All during this time, the hovercar glided across the outskirts of the landing strip without much noticed until the troopers heading for the surrounding hangers to secure them noticed the hovercar cutting in front of the hangers.

Some troopers noticed the speeding hovercar and started firing wildly at it as their visors were still trying to compensate from the massive fire blinding their lenses.

Benson was in the backseat and took Shapiro's phaser then stuck his head and arms out the window. He started dual firing the hand phasers as fast as he could pull the triggers. Most of them went wild in the effort to just get them to stop firing, but the occasional beam struck a trooper.

Jade grabbed hold onto the back of his neck collar to hold him from falling out of the car. Her grip was so tight on him that her pale knuckles were ghost white. She shouted a few profanities at Freddie for what she saw as a boneheaded move however effective it was to get the troopers from firing.

The hovercar swung around to its left and started flying past in front of several more hangers until Sinjin brought it to a stop in front of a certain hanger.

The four scurried out of the right side, using the hovercar as a shield. Benson continued to fire off his phasers at any trooper that dare tried to approach while the other three dashed to the entry door of the hanger.

Sinjin desperately typed on the keypad, but the system kept rejecting his code, either due to him messing up typing the code that he remembered or the system was on lockdown due to the attack.

Jade instantly became impatient and shoved the curly haired young man out of her way with a shout, "Move!" She took several steps back, pulled out her phaser from inside holster on the left side of her leather jacket, cranked up the setting then fired into the handle/locking mechanism. It exploded in a shower of sparks and blew a large hole in the side of the door and frame. She step forward and kicked the door open. "That's how you open a door in a hurry."

Sinjin blinked and muttered, "Will you marry me?"

The doctor knotted her brow and glared at the first mate. He swallowed and turned to dash inside with Robbie on his hills. Jade remained outside and shouted, "Freddie!"

He fired a few more shots then made a dash to the door while she brought up her hands to level her phaser and started shooting at the troopers. As soon as he dashed passed her, she slipped behind him.

The pair stopped about a dozen feet in front of the battered ship and Jade spat out in disgust, "She looks like a piece of junk!"

Sinjin ignored her as he was nearly to the tramp freighter. He pulled out a remote and tapped a button, causing the loading ramp to drop along with the door opening.

Benson motioned his head towards the ship and shouted, "Come on!"

She didn't argue and started making a dash to the ship with Benson right behind her.

Sinjin ran down the short corridor to the cockpit and immediately started flipping a few switches on the wall and the main console, causing various lights to come on in the cockpit, and then he dropped in the right seat. He shouted over his shoulder, "Strap in!"

Benson remained standing, but passed a quick glance to Jade, obviously ordering her to follow the first mate's instructions with just a glance. She didn't argue as she took the seat behind the man from the other side of the galaxy and strapped herself into the seat.

Shapiro to the second backseat and asked in a near panicked voice, "Who's going to open the hanger?"

Sinjin chuckled as he tapped a few more controls, "I am."

The repulsor activated and the ship lifted off the ground and the landing gear drew into the ship. Once the ship was high enough, the ventral quad laser cannons opened fire in a sweeping motion from left to right. Of course the hanger doors were never intended to take that kind of firepower, so they were utterly blasted to pieces and the beams continued through to the outside.

The hovercar was hit with several bolts and exploded in a spectacular manner and creating another fire on the landing strip. The vehicle was not the only thing struck as the dozen or so troopers that were just about to reach the hanger were practically vaporized as the lasers swept the area.

The Falcon raised her shields and plowed through the hole and any remaining debris in her way. She flew in the direction of the landed transports or what were left of them as two had been consumed in flames. Sinjin brought the ship to a halt about a dozen meters and to the left of the furthest transport in an effort to spot Dusty.

The sandy curly haired spacer muttered, "Come on Dusty."

Jade shouted in utter disbelief and pointed as she was the first to spot Dusty, "There he is!"

The sight she was shocked in seeing was that a few troopers that decided to challenge him as he was trying to flee from the remains of two of the transports were being cut down with what looked to her as a blue energy blade.

Sinjin shouted over his shoulder to Benson, "Can you shoot?"

Benson realized exactly what he was asking and took the second pilot's seat and took the control yoke. The first mate slaved the quad gunnery controls to the yoke and the targeting screen to the center display. The starship commander took a moment to get a feel for the control and targeting then opened fired. He swept the cannons in a half circle several meters behind Dusty to persuade any approaching trooper to the freighter captain that would not be a good idea.

Dusty dropped to the ground as the landing pad started being pocketed and sending debris out.

The Falcon lowered and landed several meters away from the flames then lowered her starboard shields.

Dusty was on his feet in an instant and made a dash towards the ship. He quickly reached the lowering ramp then ran up it. As soon as he was in the corridor he shouted, "Sinjin, take off!" He smashed the button to bring the door down and bring the ramp up just as the freighter lifted further off the ground.

The freighter took off like a shot in the air as all her shields were raised. She was immediately noticed by several TIE fighters and started giving chase.

Sinjin uttered as Dusty reach the door to the cockpit, "Cutting it close there captain."

"I told you I was going to do something crazy," he retorted and tapped Benson on the shoulder to signal that he needed to get up from his seat.

Benson immediately complied and they awkwardly switch places. Dusty took control of the yoke while the Star Fleet captain grabbed hold of the seat Shapiro was seated behind the freighter captain.

Dusty switched the yoke back to flight controls and shouted to Benson, "Give Sinjin the coordinates to where you wanted to go. We got to get out of here real quick once we got out of the planet's gravity well."

Benson grabbed Sinjin's shoulder and started reading off the coordinates he had spent the last six days memorizing. The first mate quickly typed in the coordinates through the keypad. The starship commander hoped that the universal translator was correctly translation the numbers to the first mate and that he was properly tying them into the computer. He started reading them off again as the ship suddenly shook. He ignored it and continued to double check the coordinates.

The Star Fleet science officer shouted, "What was that?!"

The space cowboy shouted out as he yanked the control yoke and leveled the leveled the ship off for a moment then dove down then back up in a steep climb, "Fighters on our tail! They don't like us running away!"

The rocking stop as the ship had greater acceleration and finally broke out of the atmosphere and turned into orbit.

Benson took a sharp breath at the sight in front of him: Four or five dozen Imperial vessels of various classes were in various orbital distances from the planet engaged with about an equal number of Star Fleet and Skoleos space naval vessels. Green turbolaser bolts, orange and blue phaser beams and bolts, orange photon torpedoes and various colored plasma torpedoes filled the space between the opposing fleets.

A star destroyer fired a broadside and shredded a trio of starships into fireballs, but a half a dozen Star Fleet vessels and several Skoleos vessels had been able to swing around to the stern of her and poured everything they had into her. About four dozen torpedoes and two dozen Gorn supplied Skoleos plasma torpedoes impacted against the rear shields. The combined energies of the various weapons (mostly thanks to the plasma torpedoes similar that of the Romulans that blasted apart several outposts along the Romulan Neutral the previous year) overwhelmed the shields and several torpedoes were able to get through along with the follow up phaser fire.

The back half of the mighty warship instantly consumed in flames as the engines were blown apart then seconds later the shockwaves spread down the center of the ship until it reached it's hypermatter reactor then setting off a small supernova.

Dusty snorted out with a soft laugh, "It looks like your Star Fleet is giving them a fight… I haven't seen something like this since the end of the Clone Wars."

Benson clenched his teeth that he couldn't be part of the fight, but fighting wasn't their mission, but escaping.

Sinjin called out, "We have more fighters inbound!"

Dusty glanced at the sensor screen to see about a dozen fighters turning their attention to them. "Split everything between the shields, engines and life support."

Sinjin shouted as he looked at his instruments, "They're raising a planetary shield!"

Just as the words were leaving Sinjin's mouth, the Imperial fighters collided and disintegrated against it.

"Sithspit!" Dusty shouted as he pushed hard on the control stick and the Falcon pitched hard down and away to her starboard back towards the atmosphere then pulled up to stay above the outer atmosphere and between the shield. The fighters that had been pursuing them from the planet caught up with the Falcon, but they weren't quick enough as they crashed on the inner side of the shields and died just as quickly as their comrades.

The freighter captain quickly ran through the options in his head as they were trapped literally a rock (the planet) and a hard place (the planetary shields). He uttered in mild disgust, "There's only one way we're going to get out of here… how's the navi-computer with those coordinates?"

Sinjin shouted, "No! Absolutely not! You want to try to jump into hyperspace while inside a gravity well?!"

"No, but I'm counting on something else." He pushed the throttle and the freighter accelerated around the planet in the very low orbit.

Benson asked in healthy concern, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm counting that they can't raise the entire planetary shield at once and maybe…" He didn't finish as he was trying to thread the needle while splitting his attention to the display showing him the edge of the atmosphere and that the shields were dissipating above them. However, they were strengthening as they rounded the planet.

The shields were rising in sections above the atmosphere and the Falcon was pushing her engines to outpace them. He throttled more then pulled hard on the yoke and the ship pulled up hairs of a second before that section of the planetary shield raised.

Dusty blew out a breath as he had pulled off the maneuver while Shapiro shouted, "That was insane!"

"No kidding," Dusty spat in disgust with himself. He looked to Sinjin and snapped, "Has the navi-computer finished with those calculations?!"

"Yes, but…"

"What?"

"We have to finish rounding the planet near the battle."

Dusty gritted his teeth, but for the most part remained silent as he pulled on the control yoke and the freighter turned hard to starboard as she maintained her orbit. The ship flew for about a minute over the day side of the planet without drawing any type of fire from the planet then finished rounding the globe to see in the distance the battle continuing to wage.

As fortune would have it, the tide of the battle was turning to the favor of the Skoleos and Star Fleet as more of the Skoleos' National Navy started returning from further out in their star system and the planetary weapons were being brought to bear on the invaders. It was one thing to attack and overrun colonies, but entirely different thing to overrun a planetary nation with a star navy.

Sinjin shouted, "We're clear to jump."

The freighter captain grabbed the throttle control in the center divider pushed it forward. The next moment the star field on the other side of the cockpit window started to stretch similar to a ship jumping to warp then twisted into a whirling tunnel of blue as the ship jumped into hyperspace.

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Author's Note: So they got off the planet, now they just have to meet up with Princess Tori. I hope to have a new chapter out seen in the next few days. Thanks for reading, OneHorseShay.


	6. Chapter 6: Bloody Nose

I got another chapter for you. Hopefully I can pick this back up faster, but we'll see.

Challenge King: I thought it was going to be a trick for them to still get off the planet and the space battle was to show that it isn't going to be a one-sided fight the whole why through (even though if it was a real fight between them, the Empire would steamroll over them).

PD31: Is Dusty a Jedi Knight? That would be a spoiler to answer exactly what he is. Little less eventful to meet up with Princess Tori? You're kidding right?

Fanfic-Reader-88: Luck, intelligence and firepower got them off the planet… and Jade has the idea about getting through locks.

Rating: High T for Violence

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Chapter 6: Bloody Nose

Sector 2905  
Federation Space  
Stardate 2267.161 (June 10, 2267)

Three dozen or so Imperial warships led by the _Imperial_-Class Star Destroyer Judicator dropped out of hyperspace about a half million kilometers and sped towards the location of the sector's Base-Station in orbit of just another nondescript planet on this side of the galaxy. Hundreds of fighters disembarked from the pair of _Venator_-Class Star Destroyers and several _Strike_-Class cruisers and sped through space towards the orbit.

ISD Judicator

The sensor operator from one of the bridge pits called out, "They've risen planetary and theater shields."

The bolding Admiral casually strolled down the path between the bridge pits to make his way to the transparisteel front view port. He asked with a curt tone, "Any enemy vessels?"

"Negative sir. I'm not reading any alien ships other than perhaps a few scattered shuttles. We're having trouble isolating individual singles. The defense platforms are sending out considerable ECM.

Admiral Howard put on a deep frown when he reached the front view port to look out towards the planet. He was eager for a true battle so he could crush in his view a human empire's pathetic fleet and show them how futile it was to oppose the New Order, but they were nowhere to be seen. His patience for a true battle was growing so thin that he was assaulting and attempting to secure the system with a third of the strength than what was called for in standard fleet doctrine. He split his forces to neighboring systems in an attempt to scout and find the elusive fleet that he had been dogging for the last two weeks—particularly the last week of them engaging then retreating, trying to whittle down his fleet.

He pushed aside that thought for the moment to order, "Order Battle Line One to break off and destroy the Federation battlestation and the rest of the fleet to disperse and begin planetary bombardment as soon as they're in position then start their landings once the shields are down."

One of the sensor operators called out, "Sir, we're not picking up any large structure in orbit, just the defense satellites and platforms."

He turned to look over his left shoulder and called out with mild surprise, "What?"

The comm/scan operator shouted in support, "The only chatter I'm picking up is from the planet to the defense platforms."

Howard looked to his fleet second and shouted, "Bring our guest to the bridge now!"

The officer nodded his head then motioned to Red Skynauts to follow him.

The Admiral looked to the communication officer and ordered, "Continue with operations, but amend orders for the battle line to destroy the defense platforms."

* * *

The _Victory_-Class Star Destroyer led several _Strike_ and _Carrack_ ships towards the platforms while the fighters and bombers raced ahead.

The defense platforms opened fire with blue proximity burst phaser shots on the swarm of incoming fighters. Similar to the depth charges of old (and used quite effectively last year against the Romulan incursion into the Federation by James T. Kirk), they detonated at a various ranges and extinguished dozens of fighters and sending the others in a mad dash to scatter from the fire. Once the fighters were out of the line of fire and the Imperial warships closed to optimum range, the platforms started firing salvos of planetary grade phasers and dozens of photon torpedoes at the incoming warships.

The Imperial vessels were not expecting such a fierce response and the bows of the lighter leading vessels disintegrated. The Victory Destroyer turned to her starboard and fired a full broadside into one of the defense platform. The green fire quickly crossed the space and overwhelmed the shields and shredding the platform.

ISD Judicator

A pair of Red Skynauts led the Admiral's 'guest' to the bridge: one Lieutenant Commander Steven Carson in his red uniform shirt. Howard's second, the Star Fleet Officer and the two troopers stopped a meter behind the Admiral. He turned to the traitor and shouted, "Where is it?! Where is the orbiting base?!"

Carson looked out the bridge windows and started sputtering when he saw the lack of the orbiting station, "I don't know! A Base-Station can't simply vanish! It could be on the other side of the planet!"

The Imperial Admiral gritted his teeth then shouted down to the bridge pit, "Send a flight of starfighters to recon the other side of the planet and once confirmed, order Battle Line One to engage the station."

"Aye, sir!"

The rest of the fleet closed with the planet to take up orbit and lending fire to the first battle line so they could start planetary bombardment.

Once they had achieved orbit, the comm/scan operator suddenly shouted, "Reading dozens signals approaching from the planet's southern pole and from astern."

The Admiral shouted, "What!" He turned to a slightly smiling Carson and shouted, "It's a trap!"

* * *

Guided by the specialized sensors of the scouts and Galactic Survey cruisers of Captain Benson's formal ad hoc taskforce from their position in orbit of the system's first gas giant, nearly fifty starships dropped out of warp at nearly pointblank range to the rear of the enemy fleet and opened up with everything in their arsenal.

At nearly the same time, a hundred Star Fleet and National Guard vessels rounded below the planet underneath the Imperial.

Hundreds of phasers and photon torpedoes lashed out at the nearest vessels, striking ventral and rear shields and overwhelming them. The few interdictor vessels the Empire had been using to disrupt Star Fleet warp tactics and retreats were instantly destroyed as the fire was split between them and the heaviest units. Several vessels engines were hit and effective dead in space.

At the same time, the planetary grade phasers and torpedo batteries started firing from the surface and striking the vessels reaching orbit.

ISD Judicator

Howard hung on to dear life to the guard rail as the Judicator rocked from the sudden impact from phaser strikes equal in strength as vessel's own main batteries. He glanced out of the furthest edge of the viewport to see the accompanying Venator-Destroyer be consumed in a giant fireball. He shouted down to pit, "Break orbit and turn us against the Starfleeters! Order the fleet to do the same."

The surviving members of the Imperial squadron turned away from the planet so they could get far enough away from the planet's gravity well so they could maneuver.

USS Federation (NCC-2100)  
Federation-Class Dreadnaught

Newly promoted Vice Admiral Shay shouted from his command seat, "Bring all fire to bear on the half sphere on their lead battleship!"

"Aye sir!" his weapons officer and communication officer shouted in unison.

* * *

The Imperials heavily favored using electronic counter-measures and with their neutronium laced hulls and armor, detail scans of their vessels had been next to impossible to achieve. However, after the number of hit and run battles that the majority of Second Fleet had fought with them with their more specialized sensors for scientific inquiry, the analysts had figured out that the half sphere on the ventral side of the battleships were part of their reactor system.

The Dreadnaught opened up again with her main phaser banks and fired off her half a dozen torpedoes launchers, sending two dozen torpedoes at the Judicator. Her fire was joined by her dozen Constitution and Miranda escorts.

The wedge shaped ship's shields held as they veered off to yo-yo and make another pass as the vessel while other vessels did the same on the lighter vessels with the Imperials firing off shots getting anywhere close to hitting the Federation ships.

ISD Judicator

The chief weapons officer shouted, "They keep getting underneath us! We can't target their main batteries at them!"

Howard turned to the helm pit and shouted while grasping to the railing, "Roll us damn it so our gunners can get clear shots!"

* * *

The destroyers attempted to rotate along their respective axis to bring her main batteries to bear on the Star Fleeters, but the Dreadnaught and the Heavy Cruisers aborted their pass and able to swing out far enough to keep the ship from being able to clearly target them.

The Imperials started firing wildly while their unit cohesion deteriorated by turning in several directions, unable to concentrate their fire on the opposing fleet as they started becoming gnats, deadly gnats, against them. The Imperial navy and Star Fleet tactics were completely alien to one another as technology had developed on radically different tracks. While battles fought by the Galactic Republic then later by the Galactic Empire were with opponents slugging it out, star nations of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants battles consisted of fast maneuvers to dodge fire and in open space, low warp speeds. Star Fleet was pressing their honed tactics to the hilt despite the Empire and the Federation having similar sublight accelerations, the Imperials were so outnumbered they could only chase down a part of the opposing fleet at a time while the rest would target more vulnerable sides and bring enough firepower from dozens of vessels at a time to kill off the _Strike_ and _Carrack_ ships one at a time.

Imperial starfighters attempted to assist their motherships, but they had their hands full with fending off the rarely seen Star Fleet fighters, National Guard fighters and Aegis cruisers shredding their ranks.

ISD Judicator

The captain of the destroyer struggled on his feet to approach Howard and shouted, "Admiral! We have to withdraw!"

Howard was nearly foaming at the mouth as he shouted, "No! I will not lose to these damn primitives!"

"If we don't withdraw they'll destroy us or capture us!"

As to make his point for him, one of the crewmembers shouted, "Our bridge shields are down!"

Howard glared down at the officer as if the expression alone could change the reality of the situation.

Carson glanced around to see that no one was paying attention to him near the viewport, not even the troopers guarding him, so he did the most logical thing. He elbowed the trooper to his right in the throat, catching him off guard then slipping to take the carbine out of the falling trooper's hands. He turned and shot the other trooper in the chest at point blank range with the carbine, killing him before he hit the deck, and then flipped the switch to full-auto. He turned the weapon to the port bridge pit and cut lose. A steady stream of red bolts rain down on the unarmored crewmembers, cutting them down and filling the bridge with screams. He turned to the starboard side pit and blasted the crew and their consoles before they could react.

The other Skynaut struggled to sit up, but he didn't make it as Carson turned and put a bolt through his face. The security officers at the end of the bridge dashed to cross the security foyer, but the Star Fleet officer crouched down around the guard rails then open fire on them. The bolts struck unarmored uniforms and chunks of their flesh were cauterized along with internal organs.

Howard and the other surviving officers had dropped to the deck in the ensuing one sided fire fight. Carson dash down the command walkway then pointed the weapon down at the Admiral resting his back against the bulkhead. The Star Fleet officer shouted with a hate filled glare, "Order the fleet to surrender or I will kill you."

"Go to Hell!"

The Star Fleeter deeply frowned and glared at him. "Save me a seat," he stated as he raised the weapon to put a bolt through the Admiral's head. He paused in pulling the trigger as both they attentions were caught from the viewport and saw a United Earth Stellar Navy updated _NX_-Class ship making a run at them and firing off a photon torpedo towards the bridge.

Steven Carson stood solemnly as his life flashed before him in his last few seconds of life just before the photon torpedo found was about to find its mark headlong into the destroyer's bridge… growing up as he bounced back and forth between Seattle and Los Angeles while being home schooled, breaking the heart of one Carly Shay, attending University of Washington and the SFROTC… but a whirled wind charge of a transport beam caught him up and he disappeared.

Carson reappeared moments later on a transporter pad then face met the end of a phaser carbine shoulder stock and sending him face first into the transporter pad.

The transporter operator shouted, "Cort! You weren't supposed to hit him! He was just acting as a traitor."

The muscular marine awkwardly laughed out, "Opps, my bad."

* * *

The battle lasted less than five minutes after the Judicator was taken out of the fight as less than ten Imperial vessels were able to make an emergency jump into hyperspace, willing to leave dozen and dozen of surviving starfighters to the mercy of the Federation.

USS Federation (NCC-2100)  
Federation-Class Dreadnaught

Shay let out a breath as he stared at the main viewer and saw the only enemies left were starfighters and a number of them were powering down to offer surrender. He quickly ordered to his various officers, "Communications, order the fleet to begin SAR and taking of prisoners. They are to give the fighters one chance to surrender and if they refuse, destroy them. Tugs are to secure surviving defense platforms for evac." He turned slightly in his seat to look at his science officer, "Commander Sunak, you have half an hour to salvage as much as the tugs can from the enemy wreckage then we're pulling out."

The dark skinned Vulcan nodded his head and curtly replied, "Aye Admiral."

* * *

Nearly an hour later, the rest of Howard's system fleet, sixty ship strong, jumped into the system about two million kilometers from the planet. All that they found was Imperial Navy debris and an abandoned settlement on the surface below.

Edge of Imperial Control Space/Alpha Quadrant

Turbolaser fire streaked back and forth between the opposing vessels as the Corellian corvette desperately tried to outrun the Imperial Star Destroyer that had found her. The corvette was damaging the shields of the pursuing vessel with her dorsal duel turbolasers, but the shots were doing little good as the pursuing vessel would fire four to five shot for everyone that hit them.

One shot finally penetrated the shields of the corvette and struck the main communications array, completely obliterating it. The destruction of the array wasn't the only thing that was damaged from the strike as the energy surged through the rest of their systems and causing the engines to cut out.

The corvette continued forward with its forward momentum, but the destroyer was able to catch up with her and glide above it. A few seconds later, the tractor beam activated and started pulling the corvette into its open hanger.

Tantive IV  
Rebel Alliance Corellian corvette

Klaxons blared throughout the ship as the ship's security personal hastily took up positions along various places along the corridor to the airlock. They moved armored crates and any other materials that could withstand a few shots from blaster fire to give them cover. Two dozen Rebel marines dashed to take up position with them with their heavier armor-piercing blaster rifles.

Tension filled the corridor and the troopers individually tried to calm their nerves before the inevitable onslaught was to begin. They were massively outnumbered, but they had the advantage of a pretty good defensive positions and a chokepoint. They didn't have to wait long as a sizzling sound started emanating on the other side of the door then sparks started flying from the edge of the airlock as it was being sliced open.

The Rebel troopers tensed and leveled their weapons at the airlock, ready to cut down anything that moved through it

The airlock blasted inward to the ship, sending shrapnel and billows of smoke into the starship corridor. The defenders immediately started sending blaster bolts into the opening. They fired for several seconds until they realized that no one was coming through the opening.

During their slight hesitation, several spherical objects were tossed inside. They realized grenades when they saw them and attempted to shield themselves and the next few moments the grenades detonated in a brilliant flash of bluish white light, knocking half the defends unconscious and to the floor.

Skynauts started pouring through the blown airlock and started firing. Their bolts only hit two or three Rebels due to their cover while the Rebels still conscious poured fire back on them. The troopers being that cluttered together and standing out against the white corridors in their red armor made it easy for the Rebels to outright kill the first half dozen troopers with a combination of their blaster pistols and burst fire from the marines. Each trooper was riddled with several shots with a shot from one of the rifle armed marines literally cutting the first Skynaut in half and flopped to the ground.

Several more troopers tried to enter and were killed on the spot, so the following ones decided to not to try to bull rush the chokepoint.

The Rebels took the moment to catch their breaths and swap out magazines as they waited for the next assault.

They didn't have to wait long as several more grenades were tossed into the ship again, but this time they were flash-bangs. They detonated and several blinding flashes and deafening sounds filled the corridor. They were quite effective in disabling a few more Rebels since they were not wearing sealed helmets as the Skynauts.

The Skynauts poured through airlock again and started firing and overwhelming the last of the defenders. The marines and security still able to fight started pulling back, but not before one tossed a fragmentation grenade at the opening.

The grenade detonated in the group and sent about a dozen of the troopers into the bulkhead and to the deck. The dependability of Skynaut armor against blaster shots was an active topic of debate, but fortunately they offered great protection from shrapnel—unless it sliced into the rubbery joints—so the majority of them stood back up after the concussive blast and pushed forward while a few others started bleeding out.

As they continued to push the Rebels back further into the ship, a black armored figure stepped through the blasted airlock, the sound of the respirator of his helmet and facemask dominating the sound in the corridor and reverberating down it. He looked down at the fallen troopers, noticing some were literally cut in half. He wondered for the shortest of moments what was the point of the troopers wearing such armor if the Rebels' blaster _pistols_ could penetrate their armor least long their longblasters cutting them in half.

He continued on his way past the fallen Skynauts and Rebel troopers as he made his way to the bridge despite any potential resistance. However, he didn't need to travel that far as the troopers had dragged him about halfway between the secured airlock and the bridge to a corridor intersection.

He was a cyborg with little patience and grabbed the starship commander by the throat and lifted him off the deck. He growled out through the respirator, "Where is the princess?"

The captain gargled out as he clawed at the armored cyborg's hand, "The Princess is not onboard."

The armored figure growled out, "This is her personal flagship and we know she's onboard. We intercepted her messages. Where is she?"

The Rebel gargled further until he passed out from the lack of oxygen. He tossed the captain face first into the bulkhead in frustration then turned to the lead Skynaut and shouted, "Commander, tear this ship apart until you've found her! I want her alive!"

He nodded his head and answered, "Yes Lord Vega." The trooper turned with several subordinates and followed further down the corridor.

* * *

Skynauts continued searching the vessel, standing out like a sore thumb dressed in red against the starkly white corridors which retreating Rebels would take advantage and cut down the occasional trooper.

A trio broke off from the rest to search down a darkened service corridor. The first one took the lead and the next moment a blaster bolt struck him to the side of the head and he tumbled to the side on the deck.

Princess Tori leveled her cut-down 'Lancer' sporting blaster and opened fire again, but the other two troopers quickly stepped back to take cover around the corner and protruding support ribs of the corridor before either could be hit.

The lovely brunette held her weapon steady, ready to fire on the next trooper foolish enough to try to enter the service corridor. However, instead of a trooper, a small cylinder bounced down the corridor to her. She immediately recognized the grenade and turned to dash down the hallway. She only got several feet until everything went dark for her and fortunately she didn't feel the impact of falling forward in a heap and hard on the deck.

ISD Devastator

Tori wasn't sure how much time had passed as she lolled her head back and forth on the pillow, trying to shield her eyes from the blinding light shining down on her face. She rolled to her side on the cot and resisted the urge to throw up as her head was pounding and stomach churned.

She patted herself and fortunately found that she hadn't been stripped out of her light brown jumpsuit and burgundy vest. She took a few calming breaths then sat up in the 'bed'. She blinked several times to look around and saw that she was in a small detention cell. She didn't get to contemplate the situation as the next moment the doors opened and two Skynauts entered the cell. One was carrying his carbine and the other holding a syringe. The carbine carrying one grabbed her upper left arm while the other grabbed the right upper arm.

He stabbed the needle in the side of her neck and injected the liquid into her carotid artery. He stated in a surprisingly apologetic tone, "That should relieve the headache and the nausea from the stun grenade."

The trooper was correct as her stomach almost instantly settled and her headache fading into nothing.

She wasn't given an opportunity to enjoy the relief as the pair picked her up to her feet then started escorting her out of the door. The syringe carrying trooper handed it off to a medical droid outside then picked up his carbine before the three started down the corridor.

Tori impatiently asked, "Where are you taking me?"

The trooper that had remained silent answered, "The Admiral wants to talk to you."

They walked several more steps until she balanced on her feet and could walk on her own without help. The trooper that gave her the shot, taller and more muscular than the other whispered apologetically, "Sorry about the stun grenade."

The shorter one whispered out, "_Josh_, you're not supposed to apologize."

The first one hissed back, "Drake, you don't stun grenade _a princess_."

"She just killed Gavin!"

Josh sharply retorted, "Who ever liked Gavin?"

Silence was his only answer for the rest of the walk while Tori held back a smirk at realizing these two weren't clones and had a possible defector at hand. A few meters later down the corridor, they stopped just inside the large conference room, the door flanked by Imperial security officers. The Princess saw the admiral she recognized in an instant sitting on the other side of the large circular table and Lord Vega standing beside him.

Admiral Ryder Daniels smiled as he stood up from his chair and walked around the table. Once he was about a meter in front of his captive, he teasingly greeted her, "Princess Tori Ablingada, it's so good to see you again."

The Princess cocked her head to the side and smiled while she retorted, "I thought I smelled your foul stench when I was being brought here."

Daniels gently cupped Tori's chin and whispered, "Charming as always Tori." He bent down and stole a quick kiss from her lips then was rewarded with a knee between his legs.

The surrounding soldiers were trying their best not to laugh and some failed as even through the helmets, some snickering could be heard.

He gritted his teeth as he attempted to regain his footing and regain his posture. He resisted the urge to backhand her, but he knew Vega would turn around and backhand him right into the deck. Vega wasn't necessarily a chivalrous individual, but he was politically astute enough to understand that undue harm to the Princess would not please the Imperial Senate even if she was the face of the Rebel Alliance. The Rebels were gaining support in the Senate and among the general populous and that was the last thing the Emperor and Empress wanted: a further excuse to give the Rebels sympathy with a harmed princess.

He cleared his throat and continued with a slightly strained voice, "So why is the leader of the Rebel Alliance just sitting out here in the middle of nowhere?"

Tori warmly smiled to him, but her voice was filled with sarcasm, "I would think it would be obvious for someone as thickheaded as you would realize that our hyperdrive failed and we were affecting repairs."

The handsome officer snorted out a laugh and slyly smirked to her, "Really? Your hyperdrive fails and you couldn't send a signal to any Rebel ships to rescue you? I find that quite hard to believe."

"I find it quite hard to believe they would make you an admiral, but the universe is full of surprises."

He gave her a deep frown and answered, "Be as insolent as he want. We will find out why you're here, a rendezvous of some sort, but don't worry. We will be here waiting for whoever you were planning to meet."

Tori held her smile as his words didn't appear to faze her. She questioned, "Where is my crew? Dead?"

Daniels smirked and curtly answered, "Actually the vast majority of them are alive. They will be interrogated then stand public trial as traitors to the Empire. The people will see how dangerous your rebellion is to them and order. You will stand trial too then be executed for treason."

"I get a show trial? You want to give me a public forum?"

The Admiral gave her knowing smile then waved her off to be taken back to her cell. The Skynauts turned with Tori and headed out of the room. The security guards did the same to stand outside so the admiral and Vega could speak in private.

Vega stated in his near monotone voice, "Her mind is surprisingly shielded, but her quick change in topic suggests that you are correct, so that leaves a number of possibilities of whom she is meeting."

Daniels rested his left hand cupped in his right elbow while rubbing under his bottom lip. "Allies would be most likely… some very important allies if she was personally meeting their representatives."

Vega ominously concluded, "One of the powers on the other side of the galaxy."

The pair quickly worked out in their respective heads the consequences of such an action. The dark armored figure spoke first, "Perhaps we should allow the meeting?"

Daniels slightly tilted his head to the side and curiously questioned, "To what ends?"

"Let the Rebels negotiate and form an alliance with one of these mongrel powers and show everyone that they support the savages that would bring the Empire down. This rebellion will not be put down by the blaster alone, but politically as well. The people must turn on them and associating with these unknowns could be the key."

The Admiral nodded along with a barely contained smile then pointed out, "A very dangerous plan… but one that could reap great rewards."

* * *

Author's Note: Steven Carson a good guy? Surviving as a redshirt? Ryder Daniels an Imperial Admiral? Who is this Lord Vega? An intelligent foreign policy for a dictatorship? How are those two morons Skynauts? Don't look at me, I don't have a clue.

Special Appearance by Joe Flanigan as Vice Admiral Steven 'Loco' Shay  
Special Appearance by Tim Russ as Commander Sunak aka Tuvok's father. I couldn't have him play Tuvok since Tuvok is 3 right now in the story, but I of course _had_ to have him in this.


	7. Chapter 7 Some Escape Plan

Hello my dear readers. I hope everyone is doing okay. Sorry it took so long to update, but I had to get 'We Love Each Other' done by the one year anniversary of it being posted. I'm still digesting the fact that it is over, but in the mean time, other stories have to be written. I'm still trying to adjust my writing schedule now that my baby is done. We'll see how it goes.

Imperius-Rexford: I'm glad you enjoyed the last chapter. Having Drake & Josh as 'Skynauts' was to give a humorous face to two losers that are caught up in this epic story.

Fanfic-Reader-88: Was there a security leak or just plain dumb luck that they were able to intercept the princess? Good question. They're running an empire that spans half the galaxy, I hope they have plans in the works to keep it intact.

Challenge King: Thank you. I'm still at the stage of the story where I'm fleshing out characters, so I'm glad that she was acceptable so far. I hope this chapter lives up to expectations.

Rating: T Heavy Violence

* * *

Chapter 7: Some Escape Plan

Millennium Falcon in Route to Rendezvous Point

In the main hold of the tramp freighter, Sinjin was sitting in the curved half circle cushioned seat and behind the circular holographic game table teaching Shapiro, on the cattycorner side of the table to him, Dejarik. Several holographic creatures, some real on the first mate's side of the galaxy while others were mythical creatures, were standing on a circular checkered board as if they were chess pieces.

Benson was setting in the seat in front of the engineering station for the freighter and causally glanced over the instrumentation, but unfortunately couldn't read any of it as the displays were in Basic. However, that didn't stop him from slipping his miniature tricorder out of his pocket and scanning the station while Shapiro distracted the first mate. Once his scan was complete, he glanced over to his right shoulder to see that Jade was sitting on a spare square cargo container and resting her back against the bulkhead at the end of the hold. She rested her head back and had her eyes close, taking steady breaths.

The starship captain slipped the tricorder back in his pocket then got out of his seat and walked over to his Chief Medical Officer. He pulled another spare container to have a seat across from her. He reached out and softly rested a hand on her left knee and whispered out, "Are you okay?"

She leveled her head off the bulkhead and opened her eyes to meet Benson's concerned brown ones. She took a deep breath and whispered with self-loathing, "I just let a girl not much younger than me die; how do you think I feel?"

The captain frowned as he wasn't sure how to respond to her guilt.

A voice called out from entering the main hold and stopping by the engineering station, "You didn't let her die, I did."

She looked over Benson's right shoulder to see Dusty walking into the hold and wearing a stoic expression. She stood up from her seat, walked around her captain to look him straight in the eyes and spat, "You're damn right you are! I could have saved her!"

The lean young man answered in a calm voice, "You may feel that emotionally, but it's not the truth. She took a blaster bolt from an E-Eleven rifle to the back and unless you could inject her with some bacta or perform any kind of field surgery, she was going to die even if you remained. They would have pushed through those Gorn and captured you if not have outright shot you out of spite."

The blue eyed doctor held her glare on him.

Benson looked over his left shoulder and commented with a shameful voice, "He made a command decision and it was the correct one."

Shapiro and Sinjin were mildly paying attention to the conversation, each not wanting to get involved as Jade scared both the young men.

Jade turned and glower at her brown eyed captain. "Don't you dare take his side!"

The starship captain stood up and faced the blue hair streaked young woman. He continued in a calm voice, "The Gorn would have only held them back for another minute or so, you couldn't have properly treated her and we couldn't have taken her with us, so we had to leave her if we were going to get out alive."

She clenched her jaw tightly, the skin around her jaw becoming even paler while giving him a murderous glare. She hissed out, "And what if it was me lying there?"

His shoulders slumped and answered in a tired voice, "Shapiro would have carried you out while I would have died fighting to buy you time to get away."

Jade's face fell and anger immediately evaporated and replaced with a hollow feeling in her chest. She bowed her head and glanced to the deck plate.

Dusty carefully eyed the passing couple then cleared his throat then commented with a detached voice, "No one is pursuing us, but…"

Benson looked around Jade and politely asked, "What captain?"

The freighter captain looked to Benson and plainly asked, "So what are we jumping into?"

Jade turned to stand next to her captain and asked, "Jumping into?"

"When we jump out of hyperspace, it will be open space, not around some planet, so what are we jumping into?"

Benson shook his head and offhandedly answered, "We're just trying to start over. We were just going to meet up with someone to take us the rest of the way."

The freighter captain took a calming breath and started again, "Okay, let's try this again: What are we jumping into? You're not just some family wanting to start over. You have military training and military grade weapons. Are you spies? Rebels?"

Benson quickly answered without a hint of being dishonesty, since they really weren't spies, "We're not spies. I just used to be in the military. We just wanted to get away from the fighting. We're armed because it's a dangerous place. I got the weapons off the black market."

Dusty glanced between the pair then to Shapiro that had become distracted from his game. He looked back to Benson and stated motioning between the captain and doctor, "The only thing true about your story is your love for one another, that's it."

Benson opened his eyes wide in confusion while Jade gave him a harsh glare.

Dusty gently rested his hand on the back of the grip of his holstered blaster. "I want the truth or I'll drop us out of hyperspace and drop you off on the first inhabitable rock I find."

The more muscular young man calmly answered, "I am telling you the truth. If you're worried about getting paid, the ones we're meeting up with will rightly compensate you."

"I told you: I got you off the planet as debt to her. It's not about that; we just blasted our way out of trouble, I want to know what trouble we're going to be dropping into."

Benson reiterated, "No trouble. We're just meeting with someone that will take us the rest of the way."

Dusty continued to eye the pair for another few moments then asked his first mate, "Sinj, what do you think?"

"Don't you think the number of Imperials they killed is enough to go on a little faith with them? It's not like they would go through all this to nail us. They have too many Rebels and this side of the galaxy to worry about."

He kept his eyes on Benson as he answered, "Could be plants to get into Beck's organization."

"Why? He pays the right people off. They'd lose their kickbacks if he was shutdown."

Dusty frowned at he continued to study the pair until Sinjin made one last point, "Besides, if it's some kind of trap, we can always blast them before we're caught."

Shapiro's eyes shot open and the corners of his lips turned down.

The freighter captain snorted out a breath and closed his eyes with a shake of his head. He turned to walk over and have a seat at the engineering station. He glanced over some of the readouts while Benson cautiously took a few steps the station then idly asked, "You were a good shot back there and held your own against how many troopers? You obviously had some military training."

Sinjin eagerly volunteered, "He was a Star Destroyer commander in the Republic Navy during the Clone Wars."

Dusty turned in his set to look over his right shoulder back at his first and gave him a disapproving expression.

Shapiro quickly asked, "What were the Clone Wars?"

The space cowboy turned back to the engineering station and remained slightly as he was looking at the readouts.

The trio thought he was going to ignore the question, but after a few seconds, Dusty took a deep breath and answered in a regretful tone, "Well since you're going to be living under the Empire, I guess you should know a little bit about it. It was the war to try to stop the Republic from tearing itself, but it was nothing but an elaborate plan by the then chancellor to turn it into the Galactic Empire. He engineered the Separatists to try to break away in the first place and while the rest of the Republic was fighting tooth and nail to remain intact, he was consolidating more and more power under him until the point that we had the Separatists' backs to the wall and that was when he seized power. He ordered the troops to execute a lot of their battlefield commanders after what he said was a botched assassination attempt by the Jedi."

Dusty snorted out a breath, "I wouldn't put it pass those damn Jedi in trying to assassinate him, anyway, he used it as an excuse to turn the Republic into an Empire to maintain security for our civilization. However, now that the Rebels and the remnant Separatists aren't an actually threat to the Empire, he needs an outside threat to hold on to power and justify the continued military buildup and your side of the galaxy provides him the perfect excuse."

He turned in his chair to look at the trio and continued, "It's perfect for him: We finally know what is in the Unknown Regions and it is filled with 'threats' at every turn: Lizards that probably eat other sentients, those Wasp things that do eat people, Romulans that could be behind every corner ready to stab you in the back and want to rule over everyone else because they think they're superior to all other races. Yeah, that plays right into the hands of the Human High Culture in wanting to bring them to heel. You have the barbarian Klingons that do want to conquer the galaxy and brutally enslave all those that oppose them. It's easy for him to whip up the people to conquer this side of the galaxy."

Benson wore an impassive expression, but internally he was nearly ecstatic at the information dump that the freighter captain had just given him. He had an independent source to confirm what intelligence had determined about their enemy and the geo-political situation of the Empire.

Jade quickly spoke up, "What about us humans and centaurans? Why would they invade the Federation?"

Dusty swiveled in his seat and leaned back to look at the Star Fleet captain. He snorted out somewhat dismissively, "Human? That's up for debate if you really are human as we define it, but if you are, you're the backward lost primitives that have been subverted by 'the aliens' and need rescuing and brought back into the fold so you can be properly educated to become productive members of Humanity."

Benson held back a barely constrained glare while he struggled not to hiss out, "A lot of us won't think we need 'rescuing' or 'educated' or hold such… backwards and primitive views on other sentient beings."

"It really doesn't matter what you or your people want. I've been cruising around your space for the last couple of weeks even before the invasion and I've looked at your public records. Coruscant population alone is literally three times as large as your entire Federation. You are vastly outnumbered and outgunned and all your Federation is doing is throwing lives away against an unstoppable force. If your government had any sense, they'd surrender with the best terms as possible. Nevel would just install a few Moffs to supervise your space and make sure you'd pay your taxes to the Empire then leave the humans alone to keep running your little Federation."

Benson quickly defended, "Humans do not 'run' the Federation. We are a multi-species interstellar federation that operates together for our mutual safety and security. We are not the Klingons that have subject races that are second class citizens. We all get a say."

Dusty sadly retorted, "It was the same way for our republic… look what happened to us."

The Star Fleet captain gave him a cold stare while Dusty returned a sorrowful expression.

A soft beep sounded from the engineering station interrupted the staring contest, catching Dusty's attention. He looked over to the readout then stated, "We're about to make the drop out of lightspeed. Let's hope your friends are here, because we're not waiting that long for them to show up."

He turned in his seat and got up to head back to the cockpit with the others quickly filing behind him.

* * *

Dusty slid in the left seat while Sinjin took the co-pilot position. Benson took the seat behind the freighter captain as the doctor took a standing position behind Sinjin. The first mate suppressed a smile as Jade casually rested her right forearm on his shoulder while she looked to the swirling tunnel of hyperspace.

The space cowboy pulled a lever in the center of the control panel then the tunnel of hyperspace twisted back around to stretched stars until the star field returned to normal, however the stars were not the only thing in their field of view.

An Imperial destroyer quickly came into view and filled the cockpit window.

Dusty swore, "Oh… Sithspit." He pulled hard on the control yoke and the freighter sharply turned to starboard to veer away.

The rest in the cockpit desperately grabbed on to chairs and each other as the ship's initial compensators were trying to catch up with the sudden change in momentum of the ship. She leveled off and went to full burn, but suddenly the ship slowed and started reverberated through the interior of the vessel as the engines struggled to drive the ship forward.

Benson immediately realized what had happened, but Dusty spoke the obvious, "We're caught in a tractor beam."

Sinjin gripped tightly the grip of his carbine and hissed, "They led us into a trap!" He started to turn in his seat to them, but Jade was faster and lifted her right arm and wrapped her inner forearm around the front of his neck and pulled heard. He immediately started gargling as she pressed against his windpipe.

She spat out, "Don't!"

The blonde curly haired spacer wheezed while trying to bring his weapon around to shoot her before she crushed his trachea, "They're not getting me without a fight."

Benson briefly let the same idea pass his mind, but he had Jade and Shapiro as concerns. If they were about to become POWs then he was about to give them orders that neither would have approved least long obey.

Dusty shouted, "Enough! Sinj, stop!"

The pair stopped struggling under the glare of the freighter captain, but Jade still had her inner forearm around Sinjin's neck. He looked to Benson over his shoulder and demanded, "Truth, _now_ before we're in their hold."

Benson contemplated on whether or not to tell him the truth. The freighter captain could decide to bargain for his freedom by using them as something to trade, but the look he saw in his eyes told him the hatred for the Empire was too great to negotiate with them. "I'm a Star Fleet Captain and we're to meet up with Princess Tori at these coordinates to negotiate an alliance with the Rebels to fight the Empire."

Sinjin shouted, "We hand them over, we can got out of this mess."

Jade pulled a little tighter on his throat with the intent that she would kill him before he could make that happen.

Dusty turned back to the window at the looming star destroyer and thought on those words for the briefest of seconds. He licked his lips then stated with a soft smirk, "You're not going to out fight them Star Fleeter, but there are alternatives to fighting."

ISD Devastator

The tramp freighter was pulled into the secondary hanger then the safety tractors guided the vessel to a landing spot. Three dozen troopers marched in three lines to the vessel then separated to surround the ship.

A group of about six approached the landing ramp hatch while another dozen covered them. One of the troopers placed a small box against the door, chirping and various lights blinking. The next moment the ramp popped open then several troopers pulled it down. As soon as it was down, several troopers dashed inside to secure the vessel.

A few minutes later, the troopers were exiting and speaking with a black uniformed security officer as Admiral Daniels and Lord Vega approached the ship. The security officer turned to the two commanders and stated in a professional manner, "There is no one on board; it has to be a decoy sir. It matches the description of one the ships that blasted its way out of Skoleos—_The Wayward Son_ from its registry."

Daniels blew out an irritated breath as he glanced over the ship. "Get a scanning crew in there to make sure and clear this part of the hanger so they can get clear scans."

"Aye, sir." The security officer motioned his head towards his other uniformed subordinates.

Vega's breathing increased and idly commented, "I feel something… something I haven't felt since—" The armored figure abruptly turned and headed back to the hanger exit.

The Admiral frowned at the display, but didn't comment as he turned and followed Vega. He called over his shoulder, "Report as soon as you've completed all your scans."

* * *

After the last Red Skynaut exited the ship from searching the vessel, two panels popped open and slid across the smooth gray deck of the curved corridor.

Shapiro was the first to pop his head out with Sinjin and muttered out, "Thank goodness you had these compartments."

Dusty poked his head out of the second compartment and held up a DC-15S carbine with the same scope as the weapon's direct successor, the E-11 blaster rifle. "They were left over from when Beck owned her, but I'd never thought I'd be smuggling myself." He brought his hands behind him and pushed himself up to have a seat on the deck. He muttered in disgust, "I don't know what we're gonna do now. If I took off, I could never get past the tractor beam."

Benson and Jade poked their heads out of the other side of the compartment and the Star Fleet captain stated the obvious, "Then we got to disable it somehow. Sinjin said you were a commander of a 'Star Destroyer', so do you know where that would be on the ship? "

Dusty let out a loud sigh then answered with a slightly cautious tone, "I was a commander of a Venator, this is an Imperial-class, so the internal arrangement is different, but…" He climbed out on the deck and finished, "…I should be able to find it."

* * *

The scanning crew arrived just at the end of the ramp with a large gray crate.

One of the troopers, Josh motioned up the ramp while speaking to one the technicians, "Call if you pick up anything on the scanner."

He motioned his head and started up the ramp with his assistant.

Josh retook his position on one side of the ramp with Drake on the other side.

A few moments later, the pair of troopers heard an odd whining sound coming from inside the ship then the clatter of most likely the crate dropping on the deck.

A voice shouted down, "Hey, could you give us a hand?!"

Josh motioned his head inside for Drake to follow, but the trooper was hesitant in poking his head into anything after what happened earlier in the day. The first trooper started up the ramp with Drake reluctantly following him.

Two more high pitched whining sounds echoed throughout the ship.

* * *

The Star Fleet officers and freighter crew peaked their respective heads just enough to look out the cockpit window as they were crouched down in the cockpit. They glanced around to see that the rest of the bay was cleared except for the Rebel ship held in place in open space between the two hanger bays.

Dusty explained, "It's a Corellian corvette. They're used for just about anything, but why would a star destroyer have one in their main hanger?"

Jade pointed out towards it, "There're scorch marks all over the hull. One of theirs in need of repair or… she's been captured… which means…"

Benson blew out a breath, "It means the princess could be on board… and we got to rescue her."

Dusty shook his head and spat out in mild disgust, "I knew you'd say something that crazy." He looked back at the starship commander and continued, "You may have a death wish, but I don't and I'm betting these two don't have one either."

"I don't have a death wish. You're the one that drove a fuel truck into a troop transport."

"That was a calculated risk that paid off with a big enough distraction to allow you to make it to the hanger, but you… the guilt coming off of you in waves says otherwise. I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to go with you to the other side."

Benson asked with a strange mix of curiosity and accusation, "You're a telepath?"

He shook his head. "No… I don't read minds…"

Sinjin spoke up, "He reads auras and souls through the Force."

Dusty looked over his shoulder to his first mate and narrowed his gaze on him to signal his annoyance of making such a statement.

Shapiro curiously asked, "'The Force'?"

"We don't have time for me to explain it." He looked back to Benson and questioned, "You have an idea on how to rescue the princess?"

Benson slightly frowned then glanced over to Jade where an idea suddenly came to mind.

She looked back at him in curiosity.

Hanger Control Station

The flight lieutenant pressed the control stud to his radio and called out, "TK-Four Two One, why aren't you at your post? TK-Four Two One, do you copy?" The black dressed officer walked over to the window to look out at the captured freighter. He saw neither trooper at their guard post, but a moment later one of the Skynauts walked down the ramp. He looked across the bay back to the officer and tapped the side of his helmet at his right ear.

The officer nodded with a wave of his hand. He turned and headed for the exit while informing his two subordinates, "Looks like we've got a bad transmitter. I'll see what I can do."

The door opened just before he reached it to reveal another Skynaut, Jade, Dusty and Sinjin with their weapons raised. The officer reached for his E-11 holstered at his side, but the Skynaut fired first, sending a blue stunner ring at him. The officer dropped while other two were dropped by the other three with their respective stun settings of their blasters and phaser.

The second Skynaut ran up behind them as Sinjin pulled one of the operators away from his station to take the seat. The second trooper tapped the control to close the door then pulled off his helmet to reveal he was Shapiro.

The science officer laughed in mild disbelief, "I can't believe that worked."

Jade snorted out, "It pays to look out a window every now and then."

Dusty walked behind the sandy haired colored engineer and asked, "Okay, where's the tractor beam controls and this princess?"

Sinjin slightly frowned while he focused on the monitor. "Give me a second. It does take a little time to slice into an Imperial computer system." He took a few more seconds then the monitor brought up a zoomed in schematic of the ship. He pointed to the screen and stated, "That's where the tractor beam controls are located." He tapped a few more buttons and the screen changed to another deck. "The princess in one of the brigs as expected."

Benson disconnected one side of his face mask to quickly ask Shapiro, "Can you download a ship schematic into the tricorders?"

"They're radically different systems. I don't know if they're anywhere near compatible. The tricorders are Duotronic based, I have no idea what their systems are based o—"

Jade blew out an impatient breath, "Enough with the technobabble, just try it."

Shapiro muttered under his breath then walked up beside Sinjin. He pulled out his micro-tricorder and tried to access a wireless connection.

As the pair tried to work it out with the tricorder, Benson grabbed a pair of security cuffs sitting on one of the security tables then walked back to Jade. She held out her wrists for him to cuff her, but as he leaned forward and whispered without meeting her eyes, "You don't have to do this."

She answered in a hushed tone, "I'm the only one left _Captain_. It has to be me."

The use of his rank was a subtle reminder that this was a military matter and had to set aside his personal feelings for her. Rescuing the princess was the priority for the Federation.

He looked up at her and smirked, "I'll make sure you get hazard pay."

She laughed out as Shapiro called out, "I got it to work."

A minute or so later, Benson and Shapiro exited the room with Benson holding Jade by her upper right arm and started on their way to the brig.

Dusty just a few feet from the door and muttered out in mild disgust as he watched the trio go, "This is nuts."

"Yeah, but not too long ago you would have done the same thing. I'm surprised you didn't volunteer to help rescue her."

The scoundrel glanced over his shoulder and answered curtly, "I wouldn't be any use."

"Why?"

"Because I would just shoot her in the face and he needs her alive."

* * *

The trio received a few odd looks, but no one had the nerve to stop them as they made their way down the corridor and towards the equivalent of a turbolift. Fortunately the door opened quickly and they stepped inside then waved off someone that wanted to ride the lift with them.

Shapiro muttered as the turbolift started on its way, "This isn't going to work."

Benson took a calming breath and wanted to agree with him since Jade was being used as an excuse to get into the brig. However, duty came first. "We don't have much of a choice. Getting the princess is the only chance it looks like for the Federation."

"What if Dusty is right? If they outnumber and outgun us that much, wouldn't it be pointless?"

Jade snorted out dismissively while looking at the door, "You'd want Cat to be treated as a second class citizen or worst because she's Caitian? The way he makes it sound, they'd make interspecies marriage illegal and you two would never be together."

"I want her to be alive and not throw her life away in a useless gesture of defiance!"

Benson remained silent as they each had valid points. He wouldn't obey any surrender order, but he wouldn't want his crew to follow his example. He wouldn't want any of them to die in useless gestures especially the one fourth-Centauran standing next to him.

Detention Center  
ISD Devastator

Benson led the three into the center and immediately stopped at the main control station for the brig. There was one security officer in black standing behind the station with another two nearly identically dressed guards other than their helmets standing on either side of the entrance to a corridor.

The security officer glanced at the lovely young woman then to Benson. "Who is this?"

He tired to answer in a flat, nearly mechanical voice, "Another Rebel we caught hiding on the ship."

"I wasn't informed. I need to check," he answered curtly and motioned with a hand to the black uniformed security guards, presumably to hold her.

Benson pulled Jade down to her knees as he brought up the E-11 and stunned the officer while Shapiro quickly brought his weapon up and fired at the security guard to his left, immediately dropping him. The second guard tried to pull his weapon out of his holster, but Benson and Shapiro already had their respective weapons on him and fired at the same time.

The Star Fleet captain immediately switched the weapon back to the kill setting and started shooting out the cameras while Shapiro ran to the station as it started beeping. Jade pulled the E-11 out of the holster of the security officer and joined the science officer.

After the final camera was destroyed and he pulled off his helmet, the science officer was able to hear what the speaker was saying on the other end: _"What happened?!"_

Shapiro stuttered for a moment then answered, "We had a ah… slight weapon malfunction, but everyone's okay. We're fine… how are you?" He turned to look at Jade with an awkward expression which the doctor closed her eyes and shook her head.

_"We're sending a squad up."_

The science officer quickly answered, "No, no, ah… we have a reactor leak, very bad leak. Give us a second to lock it down."

Jade looked at him as if he was crazy for suggesting such a thing as a 'reactor leak'.

_"Who is this? What's your operating number?"_

Jade brought the blaster up and fired into the panel. She spat out dismissively, "Boring conversation anyway." She turned to look down the corridor as Benson had been looking for the cell the princess was being held since the last camera was shot out and shouted, "Freddie! We're about to have company!"

Benson gritted his teeth behind the face mask while he tried to find the proper cell with a scan of his tricorder trying to find the only woman in the complex. He finally got a hit on the scanner and he stopped in front of the door.

The door slid open and Tori immediately lifted her head to brace it with her right hand as she lay across the cot. The trooper stepped inside and she thought for a moment that she was looking at the trooper that had given her the shot and apologized as he looked to be just as muscular but was slightly shorter.

She gave him a teasing smirk and asked, "Aren't you a little short to be a Skynaut?"

Benson paused for a moment then asked, "Oh? The uniform?" He pulled off the red helmet then met the lovely lady's brown eyes. "I'm Captain Frederick Benson and I'm here to rescue you."

She blinked from seeing how handsome the young man was and recognized the name then the face from the information pack from Star Fleet. She questioned in disbelief, "Captain Benson?"

He put the helmet back on his head, but pulled the face mask off then offered her his hand. "Yes, I'm Captain Frederick Benson of the USS… Tori and I am your Federation contact."

She quickly took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet then they were out of the cell.

* * *

Shapiro had sealed the door, but they could hear clattering behind it. The pair started walking backwards towards the corridor as a sizzling sound started behind it.

Jade looked down at the blaster rifle and for a moment considered switching it to stun as she had watched Dusty go over the weapon with the captain and Shapiro. She took a deep breath and decided to keep it on kill then raise it up to look through the iron sights. She whispered, "Just fire into the hole after they blast through."

Shapiro nodded then the next moment the door blew open and the first trooper stepped through. He died the next moment when Jade put a red blaster bolt into his chest. The science officer started rapidly firing into the breach, dropping a few more troopers.

The pair started walking backwards a few steps while firing then took their chance to run as they troopers paused from their assault.

One of the first troopers that could enter the cell block shouted, "They've gone down the cell bay! Walk to your left!"

The pair caught up with the captain and princess and Shapiro shouted, "We can't get out that way!"

Tori shouted out in frustration, "It looks like you cut off our only escape route!"

Jade noticed that Tori was holding Benson's left hand and spat out as she took a moment to fire down the corridor at the troopers trying to pour into the end of the detention center, "Maybe you'd like it back in your cell _your highness_?"

Tori outright glared at the pale young woman, but didn't get to argue as a blaster bolt flew down the corridor between them.

Benson and Tori pressed themselves to one side of the corridor as the other two pressed themselves on the other side. The trio started firing back down the corridor and soon the end was filled with smoke and ozone, but fortunately the Skynauts stood out in their red body armor. As they were trading fire, the captain pulled out his comlink and shouted, "Sinjin, is there anyway out of the detention center! We've been cut off!"

He heard back a static response then shouted, "I didn't copy!"

_"I said 'All sections have been alerted to your position'!"  
_

He fired another bolt down the corridor then shouted, "Copy! Now tell us a way out of here!"

There was a pause then a static filled replied, _"I can't. It looks like that is the only way out. All that information is restricted on that level."  
_  
He one-hand fired the rifle and shouted to his officers, "It doesn't look like there is any other way out!"

Tori complained, "Some escape plan! When you came in here, did you have any plan to get out?"

Jade shouted back recalling something her grandfather told her when she was a child, "We did, but no plan survives contact with the enemy!"

The brunette squinted her eyes as she didn't understand the meaning of the praise, but quickly disregarded as she snatched the blaster rifle from Benson then turned to fire at the grill of an air vent.

Jade shouted, "What are you doing?"

"Someone has to save our skins!"

She started firing down back at the troopers and crossed to the other side of the corridor. She motioned to the blown out grill, "Into the air vent vampire!"

Jade glared at her and bit her tongue from the insult while the princess tossed the weapon back to Benson before jumping into the hole. The doctor shouted to Benson, "Did that stuck up gank just call me a vampire?!"

The captain refused to answer with an embarrassed expression as the micro earpiece universal translator in his ear did translate what she had said into 'vampire' and took the opportunity to shoot down the corridor.

The doctor followed up, "I don't like her!"

Shapiro shouted, "I think she's cute!"

Jade threw a dirty look to the science officer in front of her and returned with a fearful expression.

Benson ordered, "Enough! Get in there!"

Jade gritted her teeth then slid in behind her, followed by Shapiro before Benson fired a few more shots down at the troopers then dove down through the hole.

* * *

Dusty crawled the last few feet with his forearms and knees to the webbing of the ventilation vent. Walking down the hallways was insane, so the only choice was the ventilation and maintenance corridors. He looked through it down into one of the auxiliary control stations. He had to hand it to Kuat Drive Yards, they love having backup after backup controls. He only saw two operators manning the controls with their backs to him.

He flicked his right pointer and middle finger towards the control mechanism of the door. The button to control the lock suddenly activated then he brought his hands up to his face with the back of them towards the room then flicked them to his palms towards the room. At that instance, the two operators slammed their hands down onto the surface controls of their respective stations then sprawled out on the floor unconscious.

He quickly pushed open the grating then slid out and rolled onto the floor to break his fall. He glanced over the controls and took a few moments to figure out the specific controls for the tractor beam. There weren't any apparent differences in the controls from the two classes of starships.

Once he found the proper controls, he typed into the station to put the tractor system in a continuous diagnostic loop. The system would read to be operational, but someone would have to take a look to see it wouldn't be operational while stuck in the loop.

He turned back to the two operators and pulled them to the other side of the room from the door to rest against the opposite wall. He brought up his DC-15S, set it to maximum stun and fired into both of them. It would buy them a little time before they figured out what happened.

He jumped back to the opening and replaced the grill before he started his way back to the hanger.

* * *

On the other side of the ship, the quartet finished crawling down the maintenance shaft and into a central life-support control hub large enough for them to stand up together. Benson held up his micro-tricorder to get a bearing on exactly where they were on the ship.

Tori quickly asked, "What is that?"

He continued to look at the screen and answered, "It's a scanner with the ship's schematics. We're actually pretty close to the hanger deck and we got to get out of here before they flood the area with some kind of gas." He thumbed over the control of the tricorder and ordered, "Follow me."

She wasn't use to taking orders, but she was in no place to argue with her very handsome rescuer.

The dashed out of the room and down the empty corridor. Benson kept glancing at the tricorder to see if any lifeforms were approaching, but deck for the moment was clear of personnel until they came across an intersection. He motioned for them to head to their left as he dashed to the right.

Jade was about to question the order, but a squad of about eight Skynauts started rounding the right corner. Benson fired and dropped the first trooper and the others immediately turned to head in the opposite direction. He gave chase and shouted over his shoulder, "Just get back to the ship!"

Shapiro was immediately behind him to cover his captain while the two young ladies stopped for a moment at the intersection.

Tori whispered out in an admiring tone as she gave an appreciative look to the captain's retreating form, "He certainly has courage..."

Jade snapped out in mild disgust and admiration, "Yeah, he always has but what good will it do us if he gets himself killed?" The doctor took the princess' hand and started to pull her in the other direction towards the hanger.

* * *

Benson screamed enraged as he chased down the troopers until he reached the corner of the corridor. His eyes shot open as the troopers had turned on him with another hundred or so standing in formation. He snapped the trigger and the red bolt fired and struck one of the troopers in the chest. He turned and ran back the other way.

Shapiro was quickly approaching but stopped in his tracks at seeing his captain run back to him.

"Other way! Other way!" Benson shouted as he made a mad dash back up the corridor and wildly firing behind him.

* * *

Dusty ran down the corridor, not caring that random crewmembers were jumping out of his way as he dashed towards the firefight he heard echoing down the corridor. He suddenly stopped as he felt a dark presence. He raised his rifle and more cautiously continued down the hallway. He took a wide turn around the corner that lead to the parallel corridor to the hanger entrance.

Vega stood in place and lazily held his lightsaber, the crimson blade drawing naturally drawing one's attention. The armored figure looked to the space cowboy and hissed out through the respirator, "A Jedi?"

Dusty lowered his rifle and pushed it behind him to hang from the strap then pulled off the cylinder attached to his belt and activated the blue beam. He shook his head, "Jedi and Sith… always thinking you're the only two that have it right."

Vega questioned, quite intrigued about the possibility, "Not a Jedi?"

He returned with a smug expression, "Nope."

The armored figured looked as if he was studying the freighter captain even if one could see his face. "No, you're not a Jedi… but I feel your anger, your hatred. They make you strong and you are not burdened with the lies of the Jedi. Embrace those feelings and embrace the Dark Side and you can have a place in the Empire."

Dusty chuckled at the dark lord then dismissively answered, "You Sith live under the same lie as the Jedi did."

"And what is that?"

"That there is a Dark Side. There is no Dark Side, only the choices we make."

Dusty may not have been able to see the cyborg's face, but he could feel the anger and hatred coming off of him in waves. Others would immediately shake in fear from such emotions directed at them, but Dusty cracked a smile. He held up the blue blade and asked, "Are we going to talk or fight?"

* * *

Benson and Shapiro were able to double back and ran towards the hanger deck. However, in front of them, double crisscrossing blast doors began to close to cut them off from one of the pursuing troopers shouting, "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!"

Fortunately the Star Fleeters were running fast enough and far enough ahead of the troopers to leap through before they closed and leaving the troopers on the other side.

* * *

The doctor and the princess stopped at an end of the corridor of the side entrance to the hanger. They could see the Falcon, but several troopers guarding the open exit ramp. Jade pulled out the Imperial comlink and brought it close to her lips. "Sinjin, the princess and I are on the starboard side of the Falcon, but there's about a half a dozen troopers guarding the ramp. Where are you?"

_"I'm still in the observation station, but they're about to get through the door."_

Her heart froze as she didn't what she could do to help. She wished for a moment that Evan was here instead of her since as a marine, he'd know what to do, "Anyway you can get out? What can I do?"

_"I got an idea, but…"_

"What?"

"_Can you take out some of the Skynauts in the hanger?"_

"Yes."

"_Thanks."_

Jade looked to Tori and quickly asked, "Can you shoot?"

Tori took a moment to see if she heard correctly then answered, "Yes."

The pale doctor shoved the rifle in her hands then pulled out her phaser from her inner jacket holster. She turned her phaser to one-quarter with surprisingly little hesitation then aimed the weapon at the back of one of the troopers while Tori knelt down in front of Jade and targeted another.

Jade whispered into the comlink, "We're ready."

"_Fire."_

The pale doctor repeated as she squeezed the trigger of her phaser, "Fire."

The phaser beam punched through the back armor of one trooper and he fell forward as the one next to him did the same when the blaster bolt cut through armor and fused skin, muscle and bone into a gory mess.

The other four snapped around to return fire, but two more were shot down before they completed their turn. The other two stood their ground and started firing back, but the ladies were quick covered by the corner and frame around the blast door.

The troopers continued firing as they slowly approached the pair, but were quickly distracted when the window of the observation station exploded followed by Sinjin bringing the barrel of a DLT-19 heavy blaster rifle stored in the room and opening up on them. He cut one almost literally in half while the other tried to use the ship as cover. The move didn't save him as Tori shot him in the back.

Sinjin quickly climbed out of the shattered window and lowered himself as far as he could with the addition of a rifle strap then safely dropped to the floor. He ran to the pair as they ran into the hanger to make it to the ship, just as Benson and Shapiro were reaching the hanger.

The freighter first mate ran up the ramp to start up the ship while Jade immediately turned to her captain. As soon as he was close enough, she pulled him into a hug and whispered, "Don't scare me like that again."

He embarrassingly answered as he patted her back, "Sorry."

The princess looked on wide eyed back and forth between the pair, trying to figure out their relationship with only a few traded words.

The pair pulled a part and Benson quickly asked, "How's the ship?"

"Sinjin's in there checking her out.

The captain looked around and asked, "Where's Dusty?"

Their attention was drawn to an odd clashing sound at the end of the hanger and saw blades clash and flash as Darth Vega backpedaled from the fierce attack from Dusty with precision slashing and thrusting attacks. The Sith Lord apparently was surprised from the aggressive and quick attack from the non-Jedi and was on the complete defensive.

Tori gritted her teeth and raised the blaster rifle and fired at Vega's head. He turned and deflected the bolt away into the deck plate with his saber. He snapped back ready to defend a strike he knew was coming, but didn't. Instead he was lifted off his feet and soared backwards down the end of the hall until he crashed hard against a bulkhead.

Dusty dropped his raised left hand and deactivated this saber. He immediately turned and dashed towards the ship. "Get on the ship!"

The others didn't need to be told twice to run towards the ramp just as the troopers that had been trying to cut into the observation room reached the busted window and started firing on them. Benson held his ground, switched his weapon to full-auto and fired into the window. Two fell backwards with cauterized holes in their chests while the others ducked for cover. Benson took the opportunity to run up the ramp following Dusty.

Dusty smashed the control to raise the ramp after Benson ran up then turned to head for the cockpit. He slid into the left seat as Sinjin finished turning on all the systems and the preflight checks.

The first mate shouted, "Did you get the tracker beam?!"

"Yep, now punch it!"

Sinjin pulled the control stick and pushed the throttle. The ship lifted off the deck and the engine flared. She passed through the forcefield and turned downward to avoid crashing into the blockade runner. He pushed the throttle to full and the freighter zoomed away from the destroyer.

The first mate pointed out, "We're going to come up on their CAP in seconds."

Dusty focused on the panel in front of him while answering, "Dump everything into the shields and plow right through them while I calculate the jump to lightspeed."

"Where are we going?"

He smirked. "The one place they wouldn't expect us to go."

* * *

In the main hold, everyone was catching their breaths. The Star Fleet captain looked around and quickly asked, "Is everyone okay? Sound off!"

Shapiro was wheezing a little bit, but was able to get out, "I'm okay, I'm fine."

Benson glanced to Jade resting her behind on the engineering station and the doctor nodded. "I'm fine." However, there was a look in her eyes that told him that she wasn't alright, but he couldn't investigate further. He looked to the princess and asked, "Princess, are you alright?"

She smiled brightly at him and sweetly answered, "I am… thanks to you."

Benson cleared his throat and put on an even expression as the look she was giving him was not lost on him.

Jade narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw tightly trying not to throw up in her mouth from the sheer nausea of the almost teenage flirting to _her_ captain.

* * *

Author's Note: I hope the chapter was worth the wait. I'm not sure when the next update will be as I want to get back on finishing some of my other stories and back to my Teddie story 'iGuess We're Roomies'. Thanks for reading.


	8. Chapter 8: Massacre of Panthatar

Hey everyone! I got another chapter for your. I think it is relatively short chapter compared to some of my other chapters, but I hope you enjoy it.

Fanfic-Reader-88: We'll see what the Imperials have up their sleeves. For you other point: Alpha Females.

Challenge King: I hope this chapter is satisfying. I think I pack a lot in a short chapter.

Rating T: Sci-fi Violence

* * *

Chapter 8: Massacre of Panthatar

Emperor's Office  
Imperial Palace  
Palace District, Coruscant

Nevel stood up from behind his desk and shouted enraged at the holographic image of Admiral Daniels and Lord Vega being projected from the center of his desk, "You let her escape?!"

Daniels held an impassive expression as he was glad he was on the other side of the galactic core… because hearing the Emperor's annoying screeching was bad enough having to hear it face to face.

The Admiral calmly replied, _"Yes Emperor. We determined that she was meeting up with representatives from one of the powers in the Unknown Regions. From the various reports, we determined that the 'rescuers' were human, so we're assuming that it is the Federation that she was intending to contact. It seems the most logical as well since they are clearly a proto-form of the Old Republic and share similar ideology with the Rebellion."_

"That doesn't explain _why_ you would let her escape."

_"We want them to successfully negotiate with one another into some alliance."_

The short, petty man of an emperor impatiently hissed out, "Why?"

"_It would show just how dangerousness the Rebel Alliance is to the Empire: they're willing to consort with the barbarians in trying to overthrow the New Order. Just imagine what the Imperial Ministry of Propaganda could do with such information. The people are already terrified of the aliens of 'the unknown' and this will feed right into their feelings."_

Nevel sat down leaned back in his chair and contemplated the Admiral's words then wickedly smiled, "Yes, yes… it would humiliate the senators voicing their support for the Rebels." He turned slightly in his chair away from the holographic projection and rested his elbows on the armrests and fingertips together to form a triangular arc with his hands to sit in quiet contemplation for a few moments.

The pair several tens thousands of light-years silently waited in mild frustration for the Emperor to make a decision.

Nevel finally spoke, "Very well, give them the opportunity to make an alliance and make sure you have enough evidence of it for the Propaganda Ministry. Take your entire Death Squadron to the Unknown Regions in pursuit if necessary. You have complete autonomy from the fleet commanders there to operate as you see fit."

Daniels nodded his head. _"Yes my Emperor."_

The Emperor turned off the holonet projector then looked up at the blonde sitting on the other side of the table. He mumbled in mild irritation, "It's a good plan, but…"

Sam Puckett sat on the other side of the desk and gave him a wicked smile. She teasingly commented, "But you don't want to let her go. Let her make the deal then… I'll find your princess and bring her back to you… for the right price."

Panthatar  
Outer Rim Territory  
Stardate 2267.162 (June 11, 2267)

The tauntaun, a white furred omnivorous reptomammal, labored for breath as it stood still on the tundra with a whipping snow drift surrounding him. He wanted to run as fast as possible to the nearest shelter, but his handler commanded him to remain in place as she scanned the horizon with her electronic binoculars.

The heavily clothed female scanned the horizon in a desperate attempt to find her quarry. She blew out a relieved breath through the clothe wrapping her lower face once she spotted the dark dot against the snow. She swung the binoculars down to her right hip then softly kicked the animal to get him charging.

The animal galloped on his two hind legs to reach the target and get his blood flowing in order to not freeze to death. The pair stopped just feet in front of the prone body face down in the snow. The rider quickly jumped off the animal and tried her best to run to the fallen individual. She reached the body, sending a silent pray to the Alderaan Lord that she was not too late. She pulled off the cloth over her mouth to reveal the lovely features of a blonde, rolled the body over and started shouting, "Trina! Trina! Wake up!"

The brunette mumbled, "Jubaron, I got to go to Jubaron…"

Melanie Puckett had no idea why the starfighter pilot was mumbling about and at the moment, didn't care as they weren't too far away from freezing to death. Unfortunately, for them, the tauntaun fell over dead, finally overwhelmed from the cold.

"Sithspit," she cursed, but had not time to complain. She grabbed the brunette by her armpits and started dragging her to the fallen animal. She dropped her just a few feet away then pulled off the silver cylinder from the young woman's utility built.

She pressed the activation stud and the blue beam activated from the lightsaber. She turned to the dead animal and swiped the blade over the stomach. A sizzling sound followed the tip of the blade slicing into the animal followed by the guts falling out. The lovely blonde snorted out in disgust, "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside."

She turned to look to Trina as she continued mumbling about going to Jubaron. She deactivated the plasma blade then started dragging the brunette again and stuffed her inside as commented, "He may smell bad, but he'll keep you warm enough until I can get the emergency shelter up."

Medical Ward  
Echo Base  
Panthatar  
Outer Rim Territory  
Federation Stardate 2267.163 (June 12, 2267)

Trina opened her eyes then immediately closed them as they were flooded by harsh light and liquid trying to fill them. The bright light of her surroundings shined through her eyelids and the liquid slightly stung. She could sense that she was floating in some sort of liquid and started waving her arms and legs through it, noticing the lack of apparent clothing but the next moment she felt an upward pull on her.

* * *

The starfighter pilot frowned and laid sitting up in her medical bed as she dried her hair after her third washing as she wanted every bit of bacta residue out of her hair.

Melanie laughed as she walked by the resting starfighter pilot, "You're looking good."

Trina pulled the towel away from her hair to drop in her medical gown covered lap and wore a smug expression on her face as she playfully snapped, "I always look good."

The blonde shook her head as she had a seat at the wall towards the foot of the bed.

Another voice called out as she entered the room, "You had us pretty terrified running out like that."

Trina turned her head to look at the apparent twin to the Princess, her handmaiden and bodyguard: Shelby Marx. She sarcastically answered, "Sorry, but I had to check out that meteorite. How was I supposed to know one of those monster creatures was going to ambush me?"

Shelby shook her head and blew out a breath. She hated being the one that basically had to baby-sit Trina while Tori was gone.

"So how long have I been out?"

The blonde spoke up, "About a day."

"A day?" She blew out a breath and shook her head. She looked back to Shelby and asked, "Has anyone heard from Tori?"

Melanie took a shallow breath then regretfully answered for the brunette, "No."

Trina shook her head in disgust. "I can't believe she'd personally go." She looked to Shelby and snapped, "That's what you're for."

The young woman with an identical appearance to the princess returned with a deep frown. "You know Tori, stubborn as a nerf. She wouldn't let me go in her place—I didn't want her to go at all. I think we should just let the Imperials bleed themselves dry with this 'Federation' and the other powers on that side of the galaxy. Nevel and Nora want to try to conquer the other side of the galaxy in a year, I say we let them and break their backs in the process."

Melanie quickly pointed out, "And how many people would die in the process of dragging out the war further?"

"I'm not going to weep over dead Skynauts and all those other traitors that stayed to be with the Imperial Navy and Army to impose their 'New Order' on us. How many of us here are deserters? I care about _our_ people first. I'm sorry that they may have to suffer, but I don't want to trade one of you to save any of them. I won't make that trade."

Melanie was about to respond to the sentiment, but the intercom blared, _"Commander Marx, please report to CnC. Commander Marx, please report to CnC."_

The bodyguard blew out a breath and palmed her forehead. She muttered, "Duty calls." She pointed to Trina and stated, "Get better, that's an order."

"We're both commanders!"

Shelby stopped at the doorway and looked over her shoulder. "I have time in rank far longer than you, so you do have to listen to what I say—and Tori told me to make sure you behave." She laughed and exited before Trina could get the last word.

Trina folded her arms under her chest and annoyingly whispered, "Clones…"

Melanie rolled her eyes. "She's just looking out for you and she's not a clone."

"I'm not a child—I'm older than them!"

"True, but they care about you… like if you were their sister."

"Then they should be treating me as the older sister and listening to me."

The attractive rebel regretfully smiled as she answered with an equally regretful tone, "I wished it worked that way…"

Trina was surprisingly sensitive to her fellow soldier and dropped the conversation as to wear it was leading. She hesitantly glanced to the blonde and cautiously asked, "Mel, have you ever heard of the Jubaron system?"

Melanie took a surprised breath at the turn in the conversation and answered, "Jubaron? No, other than you repeatedly were mumbling about it when I found you."

"I ah… before you found me, I had a vision while I was out there—after the wampa. I think it was a vision through the Force of Sikowitz."

"A 'Force vision'?"

"Yeah, it was Sikowitz and he told me that I needed to go to the Jubaron system and meet with a Jedi Master Nug Nug. He'd complete my training."

"Nug Nug? It sounds like it's something that I would put in my coco."

Trina frowned and gave her a cold eye. "This isn't funny Mel. I need to find him. I need to finish my training."

The blonde held up her hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. I know how important that Jedi mysticism is for you."

If it was possible, the brunette gave her an even colder stare.

Melanie raised a finger and quickly defended herself, "Mysticism in the correct description for your faith."

Trina rolled her eyes at the highly educated Alderaanian girl. "And you don't believe your Alderaan Lord talks to you?"

Melanie gave a half hearted smile. "I talk to Him; I just never heard an answer back like you do through 'The Force'." She continued with a reassuring smile, "Okay, you need to see this Nug Nug, but what can you do? You just can't take off, especially while Tori is gone. Shelby would kill you."

Trina shook her head and let her irritation out through a short breath.

"Why doesn't Sikowitz just train you instead of remain in hiding? We could use him."

"I don't understand the man. He was never all there—well he used to be when he still had his hair, but I trust him. If he thinks I should go find this Nug Nug, then I need to go find Nug Nug."

Melanie got up from her seat and walked over to have a seat on the edge of the foot of the bed. She gave Trina a reassuring pat on one of her legs and stated in a supportive tone, "Listen, just wait until Tori gets back with happy news that she made contact with the Federation and I'm sure she'll let you go check out this Nug Nug guy. You know she really can't say no to you—you'll bug her until you get your way," she finished with a laugh.

The brunette starfighter pilot pulled her arms tighter around her and put on a placated smile in at least tabling the discussion for the moment. She looked to one of the medical droids and curtly asked, "Could I get something to eat?"

Melanie cracked a smile and raised a hand. She spoke to the droid, "You keep doing what you were doing." She looked to Trina as she finished, "I'll get you something to eat."

Trina grumbled out, "Thanks."

CnC  
Echo Base

Shelby quickly entered the command center and the other personnel quickly stepped out of her path so she could make her way over to the General Dickers and a sensor operator in front of a large viewscreen. "Yes General?"

He waved towards the screen and stated in a terse tone, "We have a group of signals approaching: an Imperial fleet. Vega's found us. They'll be here in less than an hour."

Shelby immediately frowned at the news, but the general quickly continued before she could speak, "We've raised the theater shield and given the order to evacuate. We're getting as much of our equipment stored as possible."

"So those Imperial probes gave us away before we could destroy them?"

Dickers ignored her rhetorical question and answered in a grim tone, "Now we have to hold them off long enough to get off the planet."

"They're going to brute force their way past our defenses and try to hit the shield generator."

He slightly cocked his head to the side and retorted, "Then I guess Rogue Squadron is going to have to live up to its reputation and buy us time to get everyone out." He looked down to the operator and ordered, "Scramble all pilots to their fighters."

Medical Ward

The blonde walked back into the ward with a tray with a hot meal, but stopped and shouted in mild is belief as she watched Trina zip up her flight suit and prepare to leave, "What do you think you're doing?"

Trina blew out a breath. "Getting dressed so I can get to my fighter. What does it look like I'm doing? Did you miss the call of all pilots to their stations?"

"I heard the evacuation order, but you should be grabbing a bed on the Sundered Heart and strapping in for the ride. You just survived a Wampa nearly tearing your face off!"

Trina looked to a mirror and saw how her face was clear of any sign of claw marks and smugly pointed out, "Yes I did, but my face is fine and I need to get out there. You need to get on the ship or you might get left behind. There are so many of you, no one would notice if you got left behind."

The sweet blonde sat the tray down on a small table then crossed her arms and frowned at the self-centered brunette. "I'm not a clone. I'm the original."

Trina chuckled as she passed her friend out of the ward, "And we know that how?"

Melanie shook her head and clenched her jaw tightly. "Almost as irritating as Sam," she whispered in nearly a cursed as she turned and followed her out.

* * *

In the fighter hanger, pilots were quickly gathering around Shelby next to a Z-95 Headhunter giving an impromptu briefing. "All troop carriers will assemble at the north entrance. The heavy transport ships will leave as soon as they're loaded. Only two fighter escorts per ship. The energy shield can only be opened for a short time, so you'll have to stay very close to your transports."

One of the pilots leaning against a wing tipped laser canon spoke up incredulously, "Two fighters against a Star Destroyer?"

She turned to him and patiently explained, "The ion cannon will fire several shots to make sure any enemy ships will be out of your flight path. When you've gotten past the energy shield, proceed directly to the rendezvous point. Understood? Good luck."

The sharpness of her tone cut off any further questions while one of the deck commanders shouted, "Alright, everybody to your stations! Let's go!"

The pilots broke to make their way to their fighters while Shelby dashed back to the command center.

ISD Avenger  
Imperial II-class Star Destroyer

Captain Gerold Arnpeg was furious as he stood on the bridge despite the fact that he was about to put his foot on the neck of the Rebel Alliance and perhaps in the rebellion before the day out.

Admiral Daniels was personally hunting down the princess and if the scuttlebutt filtering out from the rest of the squadron was correct, he had already captured the troublemaking former senator. He had wanted to bring her to justice, but he'd have to settle with demolishing the Rebel Alliance's secret base and hopefully capture Tori's apparent twin and bodyguard, Shelby Marx. The assignment wouldn't be as enjoyable as capturing the princess, but it would have to be an acceptable substitute. He comforted himself with the fact that he could have some _fun_ with the doppelganger.

His first officer, Merl, nervously approached him and stuttered out, "They erected a theater shield that can deflect any bombardment."

Gerold turned and snapped at his subordinate, "How did they—you jumped us out too close to the system!"

The larger officer shouted in an apologetic tone, "I'm sorry! I thought the element of surprise would be better! Catch them off guard before they could prepare."

He motioned a hand in disgust then ordered, "Make ready to land our troops beyond their energy field then deploy the fleet so that nothing gets off the system."

Merl quickly nodded then turned to find General Veers to relay the orders.

ISD Tyrant  
In orbit of Panthatar

One of the star destroyers of the majority of the Death Squadron took up it's assigned position to blockade the planet and capture any escaping Rebel ship.

One of the nameless, faceless subordinate officers approached the end of the command walkway and informed his captain, "Sir, we're picking up a contact approaching from the planet."

The captain put on a confident smile and commented, "Good, our first catch of the day."

CnC  
Echo Base  
Panthatar

General Dickers and Shelby stood behind one of the fire control operators as she stared at her display of the orbiting contact that hand been designated an Imperial Star Destroyer. She spoke into her headset in a near mechanical voice, "Stand by, Ion Control...Fire."

* * *

One of the medium transports with her two Z-95 Headhunter escorts flew passed the gap in the theater shield and broke the atmosphere, heading straight for the delta shaped vessel. The star destroyer was ready to catch the transport in several tractor beams.

However, the heavy ion-cannon stationed on the surface fired orange ionizing bolts through the atmosphere, pass the transport and fighters and towards the Tyrant. The bolts hit the vessel and electrical sparks arced all across her hull as the captain had not bothered giving the order to raise the vessel's shields. The ship immediately listed to starboard and towards the planet as her systems started overloading and shorting out from the ionizing energy running through her superstructure.

The transports and fighters flew past the disabled destroyer and moments later jumped into hyperspace.

ISD Tyrant

The captain desperately shouted, "Switch to backups and stabilize the ship before we plow into the planet!" His crew desperately scurried about to try to carry out his order as they tried rebooting the systems that hadn't outright fried from the overload of charged particles.

Echo Base  
Panthatar

_"The first transport is away! The first transport is away!"_

The announcement throughout the base sent a cheer from the rest of the scrambling personnel trying to get to their transports or fighters.

Additional pilot scrambled to their Z-95s and BTL-B Y-wings to take off with the transports and for the battle to come. Trina was one of them as she finished putting on her helmet. She dodged several technicians with sharp remarks of them getting out of her way. She reached the ladder to her cockpit of her heavily modified Z-95 while her astromech droid, R2-D2, was already in the socket at the back of the fighter and readying for them to take off. He made a series of impatient beeps.

"Hold your circuits!" she shouted as she secured herself into her seat. She mumbled, "I wish Tori _had_ taken you with her."

He responded with a fairly rude series of whines.

She shook her head while the canopy closed and secured into place. "Oh shut up and get through the final flight checks."

The droid responded in such a way that one thought he told her to go do something anatomically impossible to herself.

First Trench Line  
Echo Base  
Panthatar

Three Imperial AT-AT walkers slowly made their approach towards the base in a V-formation, followed by two additional walkers side-by-side to bring up the rear. Flanking the heavy walkers were several AT-STs, better known as 'Chicken Walkers' to provide support and protection of the larger walkers' relative weak spots.

The Rebel troops in the trenches knew they were no match for the walkers. They didn't have heavy enough artillery to punch through the heavy armor or any mechanized units to counter the lumbering giants and everyone expected it to be a one-sided slaughter. The Imperials certainly expected it to be one when they cut loose with their firepower.

They didn't know how correct they were in their assessments especially in their lack of foresight in bringing mechanized anti-aircraft units with them.

Screaming over head of the entrenched rebels, a flight of heavily modified Z-95 Headhunters flew over their heads.

In the lead fighter, Trina spoke in a crisp voice, "Rogue Squadron, lock S-Foils in attack position. Watch your fire and the theater shield ceiling!"

The next moment, the wings opened up into an 'X' shape, the circular engine blocks splitting into half circles.

The walkers started immediately firing at the fighters, but the nimble snubfighters broke formation to rise above their ability to lift the walkers' heads to target and to their flanks, however, not before several fired off concussion missiles.

The leader walker, _Blizzard One_, carrying the invasion's commander General Veers, was immediately knocked out when the missile struck head-on to the head of the machine, obliterating it and shattering the rest of the walker. Durasteel remnants flew out as high speed shrapnel along with the mangled remains of three dozen snow-nauts. The machine's pair of mates shared the same fate when the penetrating missiles found their marks and turning them into collapsing wrecked hulks.

The other two walkers attempted to turn to have their rears towards one another to protect their backsides. The supporting scout walkers circled around to desperately turn to defend their larger brethren.

Unfortunately for all them, it was a futile effort. The larger walkers were far too slow for the regrouping fighters as the fighters rounded back around and pumped a concussion into their rears. The missiles penetrated the thinner armor and detonated inside, sending raining pieces of steel and human remains to rain down on the snow. The legs of the walkers remained intact and in a morbid display remained standing for a moment before tumbling over.

As the larger walkers were being slaughtered, the smaller ones were in range of Rebel artillery and it was heavy enough to easily knock out the leading walkers in glorious fashion. The further and smarter ones in the walkers quickly turned and ran as fast as they could back to the edge of the theater shield and to the safety of the Imperial transports and their air cover.

Rogue squadron was not that merciful as they made strafing runs with their laser canons, leaving the scout walkers smoldering wreckage in short order. Fortunately for their crews, after the first one was destroyed fleeing, they jumped out of the walkers and fled on foot in taking their chances in the cold. As much animosity the Rebels had for the Imperials, they wouldn't strafe them on foot.

The squadron of starfighters maintained air superiority around the edge of the theater shield while the Rebel troopers pulled back from their positions and into the base to load onto their transports.

Sundered Heart  
CR70 Corellian Corvette  
Echo Base Hanger

Melanie stood to the side of the airlock of the Corellian Corvette and waved the last of the Rebel personnel past her to step inside the ship.

Shelby shouted as she followed behind the last Rebel at the top of the mobile staircase, "Is that everyone?!"

The blonde glanced around the expansive hanger to see if she could spot anyone that could be left behind. "I think so. Every transport that's left so far has everyone accounted for. We're the last one out for any stragglers."

"Wait! Wait for me!"

Shelby looked over her shoulder and Melanie looked around her to see a gold colored protocol droid waving at them and waddling as quickly as possible to the ship. The brunette blew out an annoyed breath and slid down the rails of the staircase then ran towards the droid and shouted, "Come on you tin can or you're going to be a permanent resident!" She grabbed him by the elbow and tried to help him move a little faster. The pair awkwardly walked up the stairs and passed the airlock. Melanie slammed the door control and it quickly closed behind them.

As soon as the airlock closed, the corvette slowly lifted off the ground and pulled up its landing gear. The rumbling of the repulsorlift and engines shook the surrounding hanger, letting little bit of snow and ice crystals fall in the practically empty hanger as they were able to load all their equipment among the various transports. The ship slowly glided forward towards the large hanger door and once clearing it, she raised her shields and brought her bow up and soared through the atmosphere.

* * *

Trina glanced at her sensor display to see the last transport and the Sundered Heart leaving the base and heading for orbit. "Okay Rogues! Time to break off and join up for escort duty. Get your droids to start their hyperspace plots."

The Headhunters quickly caught up with the last medium transport and the Corellian Corvette to provide escort as the theater shield dropped.

Once they broke the atmosphere and into clear space where other Imperial ships were to cautious to try to intercept them as several ships had already been crippled after trying to take the Tyrant's place, Trina banked her Headhunter away from escorting the Sundered Heart. A rapid string of peeps and translated display on one of her screens showed her little astromech droid was not happy with the change in course. Trina calmly explained as she started typing in the coordinates that she had copied off the base's navigational computers from one of the computer terminals in the medical ward, "We're not meeting up with the others."

He started beeping more frantically for an explanation.

"I said we're not meeting up with the others and that's that!"

The astromech droid made series of beeps that sounded as he was cursing her back.

She chuckled as she shook her head. She was reminded why she loved the little droid: he would give her lip right back. "We'll be fine and meet back up with them in no time. I'm just running a little errand… I'm sure Shelby or Mel made sure not to leave C-Three-P-O behind."

He replied in more subdued tones as the starfighter's hyperdrive warmed up then jumped the fighter out of real space.

* * *

Author's Note: How one little battle would have changed if they had spared a few starfighters to use their heavy ordinance on the walkers. I made the Rebels just a little smarter. X-Wings and Y-Wings Bombers (emphasis on the word bombers) had proton torpedoes. Z-95s are earlier fighters that look very similar and are a precursor to the X-wing and they carried concussion missiles and from my understanding, those missiles were designed to be armor piercing. Thanks for reading.


End file.
